In an update six years in the making, Day Shift helmer J.J. Perry has been announced to adapt Red 5 Comic publication, Afterburn for the big screen. Perry replaces Carter and The Villainess director Jung Byung-gil who was previously attached to direct the film which at the time cast Fallen franchise star Gerard Butler.
Back in 2012, I had been about four or five years away from the online action community since its burgeoning began over at The Stunt People forum – the unfortunate perks of not having a working computer, sadly.
Universal
Big things are finally impending after more than two decades for Paramount and Skydance’s long-awaited production of fantasy action thriller, Gemini Man. Will Smith, cast early on as the lead will be joined by actor Clive Owen and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead as trade news sources THR and Variety have noted in recent memory for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon helmer Ang Lee to direct.
The project was originally set up at Disney from a pitch by Darren Lemke in 1997 but remained on the backburner due to the lack of technology for the same actor to produce dual performances on screen. Nowadays with such tech on hand, the Bright star will lead the film as an over-the-hill assassin who becomes the prime target of a cloning program that assigns his killer, a rendition of himself 25 years younger, to take him out.
Owen will star as the head of the cloning program with Winstead playing the agent assigned with surveiling our aged assassin who pairs up with him to prevent his demise. Especially being noted in news cycles this week at Slashfilm and Omega Underground is the mention of industry stunt coordinator and swellest-dude-ever, J.J. Perry, who will serve accordingly next to recent credits like John Wick: Chapter Two, The Fate Of The Furious and the recently-wrapped Dwayne Johnson headliner, Skyscraper which opens this summer.
Slashfilm reported this week that production will commence next month with cameras rolling from February 26 through July 21 in Savannah, Georgia; Budapest, Hungary; and Cartegena, Colombia ahead of an October 14 theatrical release next year. Smith comes off having hit big this season with David Ayer’s Bright ahead of a sequel confirmed earlier this month.
Well, I’m awake after just two hours of sleep and now I have to function like a normal human being. Challenge accepted, of course, and it’s not without a huge sense of worth and gratitude as one of the most unpredictable and last-minute things I’ve experienced as an action film enthusiast.
*All images used courtesy of Julian Miller and Martin Wan
Shawn Bernal: To make it plain and simple, I have always loved martial arts. To perform martial arts stunts on screen was an unrealistic dream of mine to my family in a conservative Filipino household. So it was all about education, career, and money. After finishing school and working in an office as a career, I made my family happy by achieving that. Now that that’s done, I felt it was time to make myself happy by doing what I loved doing.
Mixed martial artist, professional fighter and actor Cung Le has quite an expansive career in film Hollywood and abroad. With well over a decade of credits with titles in America and parts of Asia, the True Legend and Fighting co-star has also gained some pretty huge notoriety with recent releases like the 2012 martial arts crime drama, Dragon Eyes, and RZA’s kung fu homage, The Man With The Iron Fists.
As it stands, there’s no sign of Le stopping any time soon between working the professional fight arena and preparing for roles on set, according to a new viral video sent over to M.A.A.C.. While in Asia to promote his August 23 UFC match with Michael Bisping, the actor disclosed a small handful of projects that lie-in-waiting for him after his next fight with interviewers for MMA-in-Asia.
Some notable projects and important names he mentioned included that of Hong Kong action cinema legend Sammo Hung and Edko Films president Bill Kong (pictured top/left), both who are respectively co-starring and producing director Roy Chow’s Rise Of The Legend with Universal. Le also mentioned talks with producers for a role in Master Yuen Woo-Ping’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Destiny, which would ultimately reunite Le with Master Yuen and action star Donnie Yen since sharing respective credits for Wong Kar Wai’s 2013 kung fu biopic, The Grandmaster, and helmer Teddy Chen’s 2009 assassin thriller, Bodyguards And Assassins.
Le gave away a few more gems thereafter regarding being in talks for a role in Screen Gems’ forthcoming production of director Patrick Hughes’ The Raid remake, in addition to a project being put together by Hollywood stunt coordinator J.J. Perry for his own directorial debut. The interesting part of the interview was that it surrounded Le‘s career activity being heavily set in Asia, namely Macau, which might make for a few giveaways about what these aforementioned projects will entail as they are now coming to light in their embryotic stages. Nonetheless, it’s safe to say that Le has the fans going wild, so it will be worth paying attention to in the years and months ahead with more news to come.
Le‘s newest action thriller, Puncture Wounds, directed by James Coyne and Giorgio Serafini, and also starring Dolph Lundgren is now available wherever films are sold. In the meantime, watch the video, subscribe to his official Facebook page and stay excited!
H/T: Paul Martell
Hughes also went on to discuss the set up for the forthcoming premise of the new film, hinting at a more grounded setting based on real-world events. Hughes states in-full, “Certainly, we’re not there to recreate that film beat for beat, with the set up we’re following a DEA task team, which was implemented by the Bush administration after September 11th when they realized that terrorism and the drug trade were so closely aligned. So they set up a DEA task team that’s six units and they work across borders and sort of act like Navy SEALS. You never read about it, you never hear about it, but they go on these missions. So that’s a really interesting take and a really nice premise and also what’s interesting on this take on it is the clash of cultures and the clash of martial arts, the fighting styles, which is something that’s going to be a lot of fun when we’ve really started pre-vizzing stuff.”.
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