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.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless