After a couple of years in the wilderness, Tony Jaa has certainly upped the pace when it comes to his cinematic output. This past year saw the release of the long delayed Tom Yum Goong 2; he directed the action comedy A Hero Will Rise with Dolph Lundgren as the villain, joined the cast of Fast & Furious 7 and is beginning 2014 alongside a very solid international cast in the thriller we've previously mentioned, Skin Trade.
The pitch: When a tough-as-nails New York cop finds his family murdered by a drug kingpin, he swears revenge and hops on a plane to pursue their killer to Bangkok. Once in the seedy Thai underworld, he teams up with a local detective to bust heads and right what has been wronged.
Lundgren plays the New York cop joining forces with a Thai detective played by Jaa. The movie completes the deal that Tony and Dolph made that Lundgren would appear in A Man Will Rise for Tony, if Jaa would join him in another project. Beautiful Boxer director Ekachai Uekrongtham will helm the movie with a screenplay originally written by Dolph himself - additional material comes from Gabriel Dorwick and Steven Elder with Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning helmer John Hyams doing a rewrite.
Jaa has announced that fan favourite Michael Jai-White will be joining the cast, along with another of Impact’s favourite actors Ron Perlman. It is rumoured that Legendary Assassin and Arrow actress Celina Jade is in talks to join the film, which is being produced by Lundgren, Craig Baumgarten & Mike Selby. Ying Julaluck Ismalone will serve as the film's Line Producer and Ong Bak’s David Ismalone handles the action choreography.
In more Jaa news, he will also be joining Wu Jing in SPL 2, while Lundgren can soon be seen battling killer robots in Battle of the Damned, shot in Singapore (and featuring fight choreography by former Buffy fight maestro Jeff Pruitt) and A Certain Justice with Cung Le. Uekrongtham is about the unveil his live action stage show, Muay Thai Live: The Legend Lives.
