The son of the Chinese author of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) is waging a legal battle in a Canadian court with Hollywood studios over the film rights to his father's books.
The film version of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by director Ang Lee (李安) won four Oscars and now Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. and The Weinstein Company say they hold the film rights to other books in the same series penned by Wang Dulu (王度盧).
While Hollywood producers are anxious to make a prequel to the martial arts blockbuster Crouching Tiger, a Saskatchewan judge must first determine who owns the rights to the remaining books in the series.
Columbia contends in a statement of claim it struck a deal by telephone and e-mail in 2005 with the author's son, Hong Wang, for rights to the remaining books, but Wang denies there was a final agreement.
Rather, Wang said he signed an agreement with The Weinstein Company for the book rights in December 2005.
Columbia is suing both Wang and The Weinstein Company for those rights. In a counter suit, The Weinstein Company is seeking sole ownership of the book rights.
Hollywood studio Warner Bros. is taking on the pirates in China's film market, using lightning-fast home video release and low prices to beat DVD counterfeiters at their own game.
Warner's China film-making joint venture released its first picture, a low-budget film called Crazy Stone, in cinemas on June 30, then followed with a DVD version selling for as little as 10 renminbi (US$1.25) just 12 days later.
The turnaround was the shortest ever for a Warner film, in an industry where three months is more typical, said Tony Vaughan, managing director for CAV Warner Home Entertainment Co, another Warner joint venture that handled the film's home video release.
“We came out here with the aim of competing with the pirates on pricing and timing,” said Vaughan. “The fact that we've been able to go this early means we've been able to beat the pirates.”
American movie star Richard Gere is to star in a movie to be filmed in Croatia and Bosnia, playing a journalist hunting for war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic, it was reported this week.
The movie, called Spring Break in Bosnia, will portray a journalist (Gere) who comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina to look for Karadzic, but is repeatedly taken for a CIA agent, media in Zagreb and Belgrade reported.
The filming is due to start in the fall, while the director and screenwriter will be Richard Shepard (Matador) and the producer Mark Johnson, who produced the Chronicles of Narnia.
M. Night Shyamalan left Disney when the studio refused to make his new movie Lady in the Water, based on his own fairytale. Now the director of The Sixth Sense is risking his reputation on the movie, and some critics are scratching their heads and wondering why.
Lady in the Water, to be released on Friday by Warner Bros, is based on a bedtime story Shyamalan made up for his two young daughters. But his fairy tale, also published as a children's book, has already cost him dearly.
When the 35-year-old director presented his vision to Disney, which produced his four previous films, the studio said the story was too confusing.
Disney executives also questioned Shyamalan's decision to act in a pivotal supporting role rather than take his usual Hitchcockian
cameo. But Shyamalan refused to compromise his vision, instead parting with a studio which grossed more than US$1.5 billion on his last four films.
Walt Disney Studios announced this week layoffs of one-fifth of its workforce, as the “Mouse House” swept world box offices with Pirates and posted solid gains.
The cut in output by roughly 30 percent and layoffs of 650 employees worldwide are expected to save the studio US$100 million a year.
Scarlett Johansson is to play Anne Boleyn's younger sister in The Other Boleyn Girl, about the power struggles, rivalries and strained loyalty between the two sisters.
The project has been developed for the big screen by BBC Films after the success of the TV film of the same name, shown in 2003.
Based on the historical novel by Philippa Gregory, the film will chart the Boleyn family's struggle for power via their daughters.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would