The WB is getting into the movie business! Ok, I know they have been making movies forever. With the recent merge with UPN, the WB Network is now known as CW, so we can be sure that any WB news we hear is going to be for the big screen. That being said, it looks like the WB is taking a classic TV show and making it into a movie. Kung Fu.
So why are they choosing to remake Kung Fu into a big screen effort when “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues” was such a big success. Oh, I think I answered my own question. M&C Movies has a little insight:
Cory Goodman (‘Priest’) will rewrite a script by Howard Friedlander who wrote for the original series. Ed Spielman who created the series and will executive produce the feature will work with Goodman and Friedlander on script.
WB who will co-finance with Legendary is looking for the “zen” nature of the film to bolster their goodwill with China. Hopes are that it will aid their expansion into China on the exhibition, production and distribution fronts.
So as cool as it will be to have a pacificst zen monk NOT kicking ass on the big screen, it seems this project is more of an olive branch to the East to expand their growing empire.
They make an Asian role model as the star of a movie and then pimp it out to the far East in hopes of gaining favour in their heavily censored entertainment market.
I like this idea and I dont. The reason I like it is that it means KungFu will not star THE ROCK, or any other testosterone driven action star. This will be a different kind of action hero. Sure as pacificst and zen as Caine is, he did have to open up the can of sushi whoopass when required and showed the badguys the “way”. So there will be action. It just wont be oozing with manliness that leaves the patrons pumped up like pro wrestlers leaving the cinema.
The reason I dont like it, is that they are using it as a political tool. Just make the movie with the original intent of the series in mind. Caine wasnt a badass. He was a nice guy. Peaceful and living life right. Set the example and show you can still be the hero without being a doormat. But do it because thats the message you want to send not because you want to kiss up to the Chinese.
Thanks Darren.
I just hope that Hollywood isn’t so brainless as to make a movie called “Kung Fu” and not have ass kicking in it.
Ash:
Great point, and i hope the new film is cast as originally conceieved. But I think you skipped out on his villiany in Lone Wolf McQuade, where he duked it out with Chuck Norris. I don’t know if his fight with James Remar in Walter Hill’s “The Long Riders” counts, but I loved that film.
And the olive branch was lightly extended out in the Kung Fu TV movie in the mid-eighties, where the late Brandon Lee made an appearance to fight Caine.
(note: the Kung Fu Legend Continues TV series was pure shit)
it’s such a fucked up world we live in when something like battlestar galatica remakes it’self into the best TV, it’s seems lke producers just see that example and figure to re-do EVERY show that’s come out in the 70’s 80’s
just stop it already.
it’s like when Lost came out, the next fall season, every next network had a lost-ish show and they all failed.
when 24 came out, all of a sudden “threat matrix” comes out, and all it does in pollute the TV landscape
Master Kan: Quickly as you can, snatch the pebble from my hand.
[Young Caine tries to do so and fails]
Master Kan: When you can take the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave
The problem is that Kung Fu was supposed to kick ass. Lest we forget that this show was Bruce Lee’s brainchild, and Bruce Lee was not about making pacifistic zen pictures. Kung Fu is a slap in the face to the Chinese and I find it more than ironic that Warner Bros. would use this insult as an olive branch. Let’s remember that Bruce Lee was supposed to star in this show until studio execs could deny their racism no longer and put a white guy in as the lead character. Since David Caradine was obviously no Bruce Lee (who is?) they went with the no ass kicking approach. Ironically, David Caradine would be cast as the uber ass kicking Bill in Tarantino’s martial arts extravaganza Kill Bill only to show again how he can’t fight on screen in the film’s anti-climactic ending.
The ONLY reason this film should be made is because someone finally got the balls to realize Bruce Lee had a pretty good idea on his hands and they want to execute it the way it should have been done. Doing that would be the best way to honor the Chinese (who still hold Bruce Lee as a god among men) and extend an olive branch. As well, U.S. audiences would probably like it a lot more.
Unfortunately, Hollywood isn’t in the business of making smart decisions, especially when it comes to license property and even more so when it comes to TV remakes.