Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon captivated audiences around the world when it was released some thirteen years ago, introducing the mainstream world to the concept of Wu Xia/Heroic Chivalry, giving Chow Yun-fatt and Michelle Yeoh very memorable roles...and making a star out of a young actress named Zhang Zhiyi.
There’d been talk of a sequel for some time with The Weinstein Company acquiring the rights to the book on which it will be based, Iron Knight, Silver Vase by Wang Du Lu. After months of speculation, the film now finally has a start date, March 2014 and a director in the shape of veteran choreographer and director Yuen Woo-ping (who handled the action for the first film). The title will be The Green Destiny and first announcements of cast including Michelle Yeoh reprising her role from the first film with Donnie Yen as Silent Wolf.
The script is by Forbidden Kingdom writer John Fusco who claims the film will introduce a new audience to the wonderful world of Wu Xia, a land of wandering swordsman, sorcerers and renegade monks.
“I loved Ang Lee’s film,” said TWC Co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein in a statement. “I thought it was a master class in directing, but I know we are in fantastic hands with Yuen Wo Ping directing the second installment of 'Crouching Tiger.' Master Yuen worked with me on 'Iron Monkey,' 'Kill Bill' and now 'Grandmaster.' He is a first-class director and choreographer, and I am thrilled to be teaming up with him once more. With John Fusco’s incredible script and the dream team of Donnie Yen and Michelle Yeoh we are in great shape.”
We’ll be interested to see how this develops, as while we love the first film and the whole Wu Xia world seen in so many Hong Kong swordplay movies, we do feel that perhaps they’ve waited a bit too long to do a sequel. It’ll also be interesting to see how Yuen Woo-ping handles the project, as early rumors suggested that TWC wanted to shoot both Chinese language & English language versions of the film at the same time.
