Three years after Louis Koo was announced to partake in a live-action threequel Storm Riders adaptation, news out of FilMart in Hong Kong now confirms comic book auteur Ma Wing-shing will join the project for his directorial debut.
Ma, who created the original Fung Wan comic series dating back to 1989 via publisher, Jonesky, will join filmmakers Jonathan Lee (The Brink) and David Lee (Insanity), for Storm Cloud, in which Koo will play the title role. Koo’s One Cool Pictures banner is producing the film following Andrew Lau’s The Storm Riders (1998) and the Pang brothers’ The Storm Warriors (2009), both which starred Ekin Cheng and Aaron Kwok in the respective roles of fantasy wuxia heroes per the comic’s title, Wind and Cloud.
Lau’s 1998 film saw an origin tale highlighting our heroes’ tragic upbringing, raised as brothers despite their inherently different personalities. Bookending a tale of romance, magic, mystery and murder two eventually find a way to join forces and enhances their powers to defeat their tyrannical adopted father, played by Sonny Chiba.
It’s no secret the special visual effects at the time were lackluster which had no real negative effect on the film’s commercial earnings, though the Pangs’ 2009 film proved sharply in the visual effects department. Storm Cloud is currently slated for 2022 while we await confirmation on Kwok who has taken the reigns of late on The Monkey King franchise, and Cheng who comes off a Young And Dangerous reunion of sorts with Chin Kar-lok’s Golden Job.
Koo’s growing raft of upcoming titles sees the forthcoming releases of P Storm, Warriors Of Future, The White Storm 2: Drug Lords, and Roy Chow’s forthcoming wuxia fantasy, Dynasty Warriors. (THR)