Bruce Lee was a Hong Kong and American martial artist, actor, philosopher, filmmaker and the founder of Jeet Kune Do. An impressive list of achievements, but before that he was Lee Jun-fan and Shekhar Kapur is going to bring his formative years and the adventures of youth to the big screen.
Kapur, an Indian filmmaker, has received Oscar nominations for his previous directorial work with Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. The Bruce Lee biopic he’s working on now, currently titled Little Dragon, will take us to 1950s Hong Kong.
He’s recruited veteran Hollywood casting director Mary Vernieu to find the perfect actor to portray the charismatic teenage Lee. Lee’s own daughter, Shannon Lee, will serve as a producer and a co-writer for the script.
“The film will be a contemporary take on Bruce Lee who, aside from being considered the most gifted and famous martial artist of all time, is now accepted as a major philosopher in his own right,” read one of Kapur’s statements. “It is important that audiences today can relate their own lives to the journey of Bruce Lee, who manages to tap into his inner wisdom and harness his true destiny before it’s too late.”
Several Chinese companies (including Dadi Media Group, Beijing Golden World Pictures, Shanghai Longzhilin Cultural Investment Partnership and Kirin Media) are attached to co-finance and co-produce the film, so Little Dragon will be an official US-China co-production effort.
The project is currently in its preproduction stage, but shooting is scheduled to commence this summer in China and Malaysia.
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