New Zhang Yimou

Submitted by dgeiser13 on Wed, 01/28/2004 - 03:43
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It seems that Zhang Yimou has a new film in the works. It's called Shi Mian Mai Fu (2004) (aka House of Flying Daggers) and it stars Zhang Ziyi. It sounds like martial arts might play a substantial part in this film as in Hero. Here's what IMDB and HSX have to say. Please post more tidbits here when you find them.

jim01/29/2004

I bet you never would have guessed this is the upcoming film I'm most looking forward to. :-) MonkeyPeaches is a pretty good rumor site for movies like this, and they have a dedicated Shi Mian Mai Fu page. Unfortunately relevant stuff on the home page doesn't always make it onto the movie-specific pages, so you have to check both (if you're zealous about this stuff). I've heard they are kinda unreliable as rumor-mill sites go, but they seemed to have good Hero info, which was the only movie I really looked for on their site. Regarding Zhang's upcoming film, I found this MonkeyPeaches blurb interesting:

Producer Zhang Weiping told Shenyang Today that, after Hero and Shi Mian Mai Fu, director Zhang Yimou would not do any more martial art film. He said Hero was just an experiment and Shi Mian Mai Fu was the real thing. Compared to Hero, Shi Mian Mai Fu gets a more profound theme and a clearer and smoother plot, according to him.

I'm so there. I heard Zhang wasn't happy with Miramax's treatment of Hero both from their botching the Oscar handling and forcing cuts, so I really hope this one finds a different distributor (I have no idea how much say he has in those sorts of business arrangements). I'm hoping for Sony Pictures Classics, since they did such a bang-up job with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.