Asian superstars Jet Li (李連杰) and Jackie Chan (成龍) are to face-off for the first time in a martial arts action movie, it was reported.
Li, the Beijing-born star of Hero (英雄), last month vowed that his latest film Fearless would be his last martial arts film.
But movie industry journal Variety reported Tuesday that Li would be lured out of "retirement" to star opposite Hong Kong legend Chan for the first time in a film being touted as "an action movie with martial arts sequences."
PHOTO: AP
The US$70-million movie is untitled as yet but will be based on the legend of the monkey king and his quest to achieve immortality, Variety reported.
Li will play two roles — the monkey king and the silent monk. Chan will meanwhile play the monk T'sa-Ho. Shooting is due to get under way in April.
Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh is ready to begin work on his long-plannned biopics of revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara, it was reported Tuesday.
Soderbergh, who won an Academy Award in 2000 for Traffic, is planning to immortalize Guevara in back-to-back films chronicling the Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary hero's turbulent life and times, Variety reported.
Puerto Rico-born Benicio Del Toro, an Oscar winner alongside Soderbergh for his role in Traffic, is set to play Guevara.
Production for the two films will get under way next May in Mexico and other Latin American locations, Variety reported. Variety reported that the films would chart Guevara's life from the mid-1950s.
The first film, The Argentine, centers on Guevara's passage to Cuba from Mexico in 1956, where he helped to topple the pro-US regime of Fulgencio Batista. The second film, Guerrilla, begins with Guevara's trip to New York, where he spoke at the UN in 1964.
Guevara was executed in 1967 after his capture in Bolivia.
The life of a less violent legend will be brought to the big screen by Hollywood stars Keira Knightley and Lindsay Lohan who will feature in a film depicting the tangled relationships surrounding Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, Variety reported Tuesday.
Teen idol Lohan, the star of Herbie Fully Loaded and upcoming Bobby, will play Thomas' wife Caitlin while Knightley of Pirates of the Caribbean fame, will play a childhood friend of the poet, Vera Phillips.
The film is based on a script by Knightley's mother, playwright Sharman MacDonald, and is titled The Best Time of Our Lives.
The movie centers on the bizarre real-life attack on Thomas' home by Phillips and her husband William Killick, who opened fire with a machine gun and a grenade.
The creator of a documentary about California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's entry into politics said on Wednesday he plans to keep Alec Baldwin's narration in the film despite the actor's demand that his voice and name be taken off the picture.
Baldwin made headlines this week when he wrote in an Internet posting that he wanted out of the film Running with Arnold because of Nazi imagery that he believed was "unfair" to the Republican governor.
"I am certainly not a supporter of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think he is unqualified for his current job," Baldwin, a staunch Democrat, said in a blog posted on the Web site of political commentator Arianna Huffington.
"But Schwarzenegger deserves to be treated fairly and the film's images of Nazi rallies were over the line," he wrote. Baldwin also said his lawyer sent the filmmakers a cease-and-desist letter.
Dan Cox, the veteran entertainment journalist who wrote, produced and directed the film, said he had no intention of removing Baldwin's voice from the film or dropping his name from the credits as narrator.
"He doesn't have a leg to stand on. We have a contract with him," Cox said, adding that Baldwin was paid US$15,000 for his efforts, although the actor said he returned the fee.
Daniel Garcia, who starred as Huracan (Hurricane) Ramirez during the golden age of Mexican wrestling films in the 1960s, has died of a heart attack, family members said on Wednesday.
Garcia, who died on Tuesday at the age of 80, wore a blue-and-white mask in matches in Asia, South America and the Caribbean. He also played leading roles in several movies during his three-decade-long career.
His identity was not revealed until he retired in 1987.
Garcia's on-screen persona, Huracan Ramirez, and other masked wrestlers fought vampires, international crime organizations and Martians in low-budget, but extremely imaginative movies treasured by cult-film collectors worldwide.
Filmmaking brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski will team up again to direct their first movie since the phenomenally successful Matrix trilogy, it was reported Wednesday.
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