You'll have to forgive my sarcastic tone. It isn't that I wouldn't want to see a team up of Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa on the big screen but the last time we were finally given a match up of established martial arts actors on screen the end result was The Forbidden Kingdom. It wasn't what the martial arts movie fans wanted. This time could be different. No Hollywood. Ringo Lam has been out of the action film scene for a while but he hasn't directed a Stuart Little film. And since Donnie Yen no longer needs to prove himself as a legitimate talent it would be in everyone's best interest to have some of that experience rub off on Tony Jaa who has had a bit of a topsy turvy year. It's only talk for now but it doesn't cost anything to dream.
Recently, Raymond Wong has stepped down as the chairman of Mandarin Films to set up his own film studio which is teaming up with Mainland investors to produce a modern actioner at around HK$150m in mid 2010. The film will be directed by Ringo Lam. Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa are being invited to star in the film and they would have a series of fights.
Raymond Wong hopes to unite the two international screen giants despite the high fee of US$3m (HK$23.4m) commanded by Tony Jaa, "I'll talk about the new firm at a later date. It'd be great to have to the two appear in the same film, but I'll only talk about it when things are finalized."
It is too bad that Donnie Yen did not get a bigger career. I was strangely impressed by Dragon Tiger Gate and have been gobbling his movies up since.
Right on. Jaa is an outstanding talent that deserves to be challenged and put in different film situations.
I sincerely doubt this will ever happen, not with Yen's retirement coming up. Still, it would be pretty awesome. Jackie Chan vs Jet Li was pretty good, but primarily lacked the OOMPH due to the 2 actor's age. Jaa is young. Yen isn't but at least he's still in better shape than Chan and Li.
Does Ringo Lam actually remember how to direct films? He must have been promised a lot of cash if it was enough to lure him out of his hermit status.
I'd be down for this, but I doubt they'll pull it off.