News

Official Synopsis For Jesse Johnson Actioner, SAVAGE DOG

It was just this summer when we finally learned of director Jesse Johnson’s latest return to the director’s chair for period action thriller, Savage Dog. The attachment of actor and martial artist Scott Adkins certainly emboldened things a bit followed by news of fellow stars Marko Zaror and Cung Le along with actress JuJu Chan certainly helped keep things afloat as production moved forward. The promotional campaign for the film hasn’t officially begun yet although what came of it about a month ago was a mock promotional poster which you can click here to check out. Otherwise, you can expect Spring 2017 to be a busy time for Johnson and the good folks over at Bleiberg Entertainment to get the ball rolling with a trailer and some extra photo gems from the production with Savage Dog certainly looking to add some extra fervor to the principle Adkins and Zaror fanbases. […]

DOCTOR STRANGE: Zara Phythian And Friends Take To Cineworld In The UK For The Local Martial Arts Community

Lee B. Golden III

Marvel EXCLUSIVE: Director Scott Derrickson’s latest contribution to the Marvel big screen fanfare, Doctor Strange, finally opened its mystical doors to the U.S. on Friday. The film is also available in the U.K. where it opened late last month and is certainly bolstering the martial arts community some where martial artist and lovely in-person individual to meet, actress Zara Phythian hosted a screening of the film to help raise awareness for the upcoming three-day WMKF World Martial Art Championships in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire starting on November 11. Phythian, who co-stars as one of of the film’s principal villains under actor Mads Mikkelsen, was on hand at the screening to discuss the event along with several other martial artists. She appears at the tail end of the video just beneath the press announcement after the jump, and in tow of others speaking on behalf of the new Marvel film, including stunt performers Rob […]

Universal, David Hayter To Help Form VOLTRON For The Big Screen!

Lee B. Golden III

Growing up in the 1980s as a child with a love for many things action or sci-fi and fantasy, you can best bet giant robot franchises were a part of your upbringing. Animated classic Voltron in its televised evolution since 1984 through today’s Netflix offering has surely left its own impression on young minds and in the years since, and for all its worth, a live-action film was probably the next big step. Such as it has been for well over a decade now with all sorts of rumors and long-outdated facts pertaining to the film whilst leaving the faithfuls high and dry of any hope. Well, the wait is somewhat over now with news from Deadline that reports Universal, in a package deal with Dreamworks Animation, is taking up the slack following efforts by Jeffrey Katzenberg prior to his departure from DWA as its CEO earlier this year. X-Men […]

Navy Seals Go Treasure Hunting In The Explosive New Action-Packed RENEGADES Trailer

Lee B. Golden III

Director Steven Quale’s latest, Renegades, looks a lot cooler than I thought it would when it was initially announced as “The Lake”. Actor Sullivan Stapleton certainly boded well with me at the time his run on Strike Back was over on Cinemax along with his role in 300: Rise Of An Empire which had some of the best action sequences I had ever seen right next to The Raid 2 that year and so Renegades seems like a good turn thusfar. SYNOPSIS: RENEGADES is about a team of Navy SEALs on assignment in war-torn Europe who discover a treasure of gold at the bottom of a lake — rumored to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In an effort to help the locals, they go rogue and engineer a heist to retrieve the gold and return it to its rightful owners. But in a deadly turn of events, they […]

Gareth Evans’s APOSTLE Bestows Upon Dan Stevens To Star

Lee B. Golden III

Having finally seen the 2014 action horror suspense thriller, The Guest, a little over a year ago, I was eventually thrilled at the idea of director Adam Wingard having secured the remake rights for Kim Jee-Woon’s I Saw The Devil. It feels like just the kind of role befitting of The Guest star Dan Stevens as he’s the first to come to mind after delivering such an impressive performance in his first film. It essentially put the actor on my radar and with his latest TV and film prospects including X-Men television series spin-off, Legion, and Bill Condon’s Beauty And The Beast next year, I can’t wait to see what happens next. The same goes for Stevens’s latest film announcement made in less than a day after events kicked off at the American Film Market in Santa Monica when it was reported that Gareth Evans was on deck to direct […]

DVD Review: REIGN OF ASSASSINS Romances With Timeless Wuxia Enrichment

Oh man, I really loved this movie when I first saw this and thanks to Anchor Bay Entertainment for this review copy of this awesome film! So let’s see what they have here in their promotional papers: “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” relocate to ancient China in the dazzling martial-arts epic, Reign of Assassins” – The Hollywood Reporter What the heck? That’s not really accurate. You don’t even know the guy can fight until…you know what, let’s just jump into the review, yeah? The story starts out as Drizzle, who is played by Kelly Lin in the beginning of the movie, is sent out by the Dark Stone gang to assassinate a prime minister and his son and retrieve the remains of a holy corpse that is said that possesses special powers. After she kills them, she meets a monk that asks her to change her ways. She wasn’t listening so […]

Paramount, Akiva Goldsman Engage AVENGELYNE Feature Film Adaptation

Lee B. Golden III

Comic book creator Rob Liefield’s 1995 Maximum Press superheroine, Avengelyne, was last reported back in 2013 to have found its star in MMA fighter-cum-actress Gina Carano in the course of officially launching efforts toward finding screenwriters and a director. That project has stayed quiet ever since while the actress who took on a cameo in the 2009 action thriller, Blood And Bone before leading the fully-fledged Steven Soderbergh thriller, Haywire, has gone on to build a notable career in film for herself with her most recent stint in Tim Miller’s record-breaking adaptation of Liefield’s popular comic, Deadpool. As for whether or not Avengelyne is still Carano’s remains to be seen and hasn’t been indicated at all in Deadline‘s latest report on Thursday. The article points to a pre-emptive film rights deal by Paramount which hosts the addition of Akiva Goldsman as producer with an eye to direct, and for a […]

A STARSHIP TROOPERS Reboot Is In Order At Columbia Pictures

Lee B. Golden III

I think I really ought to start preparing myself mentally for these. As much as I was a couch potato growing up while watching movies at home, it was in 1997 when actor Casper Van Dien hit it big with Robocop helmer Paul Verohoeven’s sci-fi action adventure, Starship Troopers. The film was a bit of a mixed affair yet became a cult hit while drawing out three sequels for the small screen, mingling explosive action and gore with satirical themes of satire and fascism. At the center of it all was character Johnny Rico who rises in the military ranks, driven by the grit and steadfastiness of his superior in the wake of an attack on Earth by alien bugs. Late author Robert A. Heinlen’s 1959 novel was the source material of that book, and is reportedly now being observed with a more centered approach for what THR describes as […]

WONDER WOMAN Shows The Men How It’s Done In The Official Trailer!

Lee B. Golden III

If there were ever a better time for the longstanding DC comic book legend, Wonder Woman, that time has come. Sure, it’s taken decades for the character to see anything other than TV and animated properties like her other male counterparts, though the market these days is reportedly tons more profitable for film now, and I’d bet that director Patty Jenkins couldn’t be more pleased. The first teaser trailer shined over the summer amid Comic Con fevor and at least one international spot circulated. On Thursday, Warner Bros. Pictures threw the signal once more for fans to revel in actress Gal Gadot’s latest iteration of the cinematic superheroine following this year’s Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice. SYNOPSIS: Before she was Wonder Woman, she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, when an American pilot crashes on their shores […]

Will Yun Lee Turns Martial Arts Gangster For Feature-Length Novel Adaptation, HATCHET MEN

Lee B. Golden III

Will Yun Lee (Torque, Elektra, The Wolverine, Falling Water) is reportedly set to star as the notorious crime boss, Little Pete, as well as produce in the forthcoming adaptation of Richard H. Dillon’s 2012 novel, Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Australian scribe Morgan Duncan and producer Michael Thomas (The 33) are adapting the script which will set the tone for Lee to apply his exponential Tae Kwon Do training for the film’s action. The phrase itself, “Hatchet Men”, takes its cues from the period centric to the book – between the late 1880s and early 1920s, where hatchet-wielding killers would silence the rivals of their bosses amid the gang upheaval in San Francisco’s Chinatown at the time. Crime ran rampant with the availability of opium, slave girls, gang violence and corrupt politicians at the beckoncall of their mob cohorts, and at the center […]

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EXCLUSIVE: Chris Mark Debuts On The Official Sales Art For Martial Arts Sci-Fi Actioner, MEZA

Lee B. Golden III

Look to the vast reaches of the internet and it won’t be too difficult to find a number of independently produced martial arts demos and action shorts from various up-and-coming stuntfighting and film groups. Canada’s own Team 2X is a product of that evolution where their members have since righteously earned their career growth into the professional field of mainstream stuntwork, including James Mark, having proven himself for fourteen years and now with TV and film credits like Nikita, Covert Affairs, Falling Skies, Pacific Rim, Wolves and Scott Pilgrim VS. The World. Clearly for Mark, the sensible move from there was to seuge into filmmaking, and with none other than brother, fellow martial artist, stuntman and actor Chris Mark who shares similar credits with the elder Mark in addition to Warcraft, Allan Ungar’s 2015 action hit, Gridlocked, and the blockbuster DCU adaptation of Suicide Squad as of late. Thus, following several […]

Gareth Huw Evans Plots 2017 Start Date For Period Thriller, APOSTLE

Lee B. Golden III

A third outing for stellar crime feature saga, The Raid, still remains on hold in addition to whatever else director Gareth Huw Evans has in tow from here on out. Gladly that hasn’t kept him down from applying himself on paper and with that, he is now poised to begin filming a new period thriller starting in the UK in March. Apostle is the name of the film while in the auspices of XYZ Films will will introduce the film to the American Film Market this week for buyers while producing. THR reports on the film whose story sees a mysterious man on a mission to rescue his sister from a religious cult demanding ransom, digging deeper to uncover its the lies and secrets in the process. The film definitely sounds like a different tone from what Evans is usually known for having applied himself so vehemently with martial […]

Review: CONCRETE AND CRASHPADS: STUNTS IN NEW YORK Welcomes You To The Urban Stunt Jungle

Lee B. Golden III

I’ve been covering stunt performers off and on for about eight years – three of them most prolifically here at Film Combat Syndicate. As a fan, been following stunt performers since about 2004 or 2005 when I became keen on the growing number of homemade kung fu movies being shared on forums and independent stunt team pages before YouTube was born and it’s been a blast seeing how some of these folks have evolved since then. That said, if there is one thing that I am proud to have observed in all these years, it is that once in a while, you will find more and more people who work in journalism, as well as stunts, covering the stunt industry in all its efforts in film, stage and TV. New York City has proven especially viable here with its own pockets of communities and people working together to create, build […]

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Hell Hath No Fury Like LADY BLOODFIGHT In The First Trailer

Lee B. Golden III

Having undergone a quiet post-production period with little publicity thus far, director Chris Nahon’s latest film has officially kicked off with an international turn for its release. For this, we turn to Lady Bloodfight, centric on female martial arts stunt and screenfighting talent all around with Hollywood stuntwoman-turned-actress Amy Johnston front and center. SYNOPSIS: Jane is a beautiful but troubled American girl backpacking her way through Hong Kong. When she successfully fends off three thugs trying to rob her, it draws the attention of Shu, a Wudang champion, who is impressed by her raw street fighting abilities. Shu recruits Jane and trains her to fight in the vicious, all-female, underground martial arts tournament known as “The Kumite.” After months of rigorous preparation, Jane is ready to face off against the deadliest female fighters in the world, including Ling, the apprentice of Shu’s nemesis, Wai, a Shaolin master. Other nefarious forces […]

Stephen Fung’s THE ADVENTURERS Set Sail In The First Explosive New Teaser

Lee B. Golden III

Stephen Fung’s anticipated Once A Thief revamp, The Adventurers, is finally rolling out some footage in a fresh new teaser ahead of a 2017 release. Actor Andy Lau leads the cast with a story that refurbishes things a bit with regards to its narrative and with producing along with John Woo cohort Terence Chang. Also starring are Shu Qi, Tony Yang and Zhang Jingchu with Jean Reno adding to the film’s international appeal as sampled in the latest trailer which you can view below courtesy of Far East Films. Lau’s next endeavors are aplenty with The Great Wall this December, as well as Shockwave and Jing Wong’s Chasing Dragons also starring Donnie Yen. ‘The Adventurers’ (2017) trailer by far-east-films

Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Ruby Rose And Deepika Padukone Take Charge In The New xXx: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE Trailer

Lee B. Golden III

Actor Vin Diesel took to Facebook Live for the official launch of the third trailer for the upcoming release of xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage. All you need to know from there is that the film, from director D.J. Caruso, arrives on January 20, 2017. Apart from that, the recording of the live stream can be viewed below where Diesel hypes up viewers with his own insight and thoughts along with live inserts of the film’s co-stars…or just feel free to skip to the 19:30 mark to catch the goods. View post on imgur.com

KICKBOXER: VENGEANCE Brings The Fight Home On Blu-Ray And U.S. DVD On November 8

Lee B. Golden III

A reboot of the 1989 martial arts classic, Kickboxer, wasn’t always an appealing idea to all. Needless to say, the result has proven adequate and entertaining for many a Jean-Claude Van Damme fan whose remergence in John Stockwell’s latest reboot fanfare, Kickboxer: Vengeance, boasts plentiful entertainment and martial arts action. Actor and martial artist Alain Moussi makes his feature-length debut in what is currently primed for a trilogy with the second, Kickboxer: Retaliation, already wrapped and in tow with a release pending. Moussi’s recent appearance in the go90 miniseries, Street Fighter: Resurrection, was but a mere, albeit fruitful and energizing sampling of Moussi in his transition from stunt performance to lead acting roles and Kickboxer: Vengeance surely gives him some shining moments next to his legendary co-star. You can read more about it in James Couche’s review of the film as well as his interview with Moussi while you plot […]

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AFM 2016: Everyone’s A Target In The Latest Trailer For Benny Tjandra Action Crime Thriller, SYNDICATE SMASHER

Lee B. Golden III

Making way to the American Film Market soon is the latest bit of lo-fi action and B-movie fanfare from the auspices of Indonesian filmmaker and producer Benny Tjandra’s New GenerAsian Films. For this, we turn to the new crime thriller, Syndicate Smasher, pairing with co-director and writer Doug Tochioka. Tochioka’s script joins legendary character actor Mel Novak (Game Of Death, Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance, Checkpoint) with actresses Laurene Landon and Olya Lvova, and actors John Miguel, David Prak, Eiji Inoue and more for a story centered on a group of mercenaries, initially hired as contract killers, who find themselves targets of four powerful crime organizations and families. Guns go ablaze in the first trailer which eventually aired last month and presents an otherwise appealing little jewel for action movie aficionados when it releases in due time. Take a look at the trailer below!

Check Out The Newest Trailer And Featurette For Ringo Lam Actioner, SKY ON FIRE

Lee B. Golden III

Action fans needn’t worry this season and notably if you’re in legendary auteur Ringo Lam’s corner. The new thriller, Sky On Fire is coming soon to cinemas and with none other than Daniel Wu front and center of it all as a security agent on a mission to protect a game-changing cancer cure from slipping into the wrong hands. Amber Kuo, Joseph Chang and Gordon Lam round out the cast of principles for the film’s outing in November. The latest trailer is just below and with it, a thrilling behind-the-scenes look that pays nothing short of an explosive, driven, hard-hitting and fiery homage to our dear director at hand, and then some.

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Life After ‘Deadpool’ Brings Tim Miller To Sony’s SONIC THE HEDGEHOG; Jeff Fowler Directing

Lee B. Golden III

Time and preparation surely met with opportunity for VFX wiz and prolific Deadpool director Tim Miller in the last several days. Having departed the coveted, daunting position of directing one of the biggest and most antipated upcoming sequels, Miller has already moved onto a few other endeavors being reported since then. Sega game property, Sonic The Hedgehog, which announced feature-film in development two years ago through Sony and Sega Sammy Holdings subsidiary, Marza Animation Planet, is one of them. Jeff Fowler will direct the movie, aiming as a live-action CG hybrid to with Miller executive producing along with Toby Ascher. Marza’s Ito Takeshi and Onishi Mie will serve as producers next to Neal H. Moritz (The Fast and The Furious franchise). per The Wrap: “Jeff is an incredible director with strong story instincts,” Miller said in a statement. “The world of Sonic presents the perfect opportunity for Jeff to leverage […]