Keanu Reeves Wants To Play The Villain In His Directorial Debut ‘Man Of Tai Chi’
Last yearKeanu Reevesstarted talking aboutMan of Tai Chi, which would be his first feature project as a director. The martial arts film would be set in the present day, but is intended as an homage to classic kung-fu films. Now Mr. Reeves says he wants to play the villain in the film, which is gathering financing now.
Speaking toMTV, he said,
We want to do it in Chinese and English, do it as kind of a co-production with CFG perhaps, which is a Chinese film group, kind of a studio. It’s tricky.
That’s the sort of financing deal we might start seeing a lot of soon. It’s how Ryan Johnson’sLoopergot made, and we’ve already started to hear about other films looking to use Chinese money to get off the ground. (Not theRed Dawnremake, though.)
TheMan of Tai Chiscript is packed with action, he says.
There’s 18 fights. We’ve timed it out. It’s about 40 minutes of fighting. I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie. Good story, good plot — but let’s get some good kung fu going!
Honestly, that sounds like fun, and possibly a good double-feature with RZA’sThe Man With the Iron Fists. Keanu Reeves has got some solid kung-fu training thanks to theMatrixfilms, and hopefully all that experience, even though it is a few years in the past, can help shapeMan of Tai Chi. But first he’s shooting the samurai film47 Ronin, which hejust describedas follows:
It’s kind of a western. I call it a story of revenge and impossible love. The samurai become ronin, outcast, and decide to enact revenge on the person who is responsible for the death of their lord. And I play an outsider, a kind of half-breed with a mysterious past named Kai, who’s in love with the princess and she’s in love with me, but we can’t be together. But during this journey and revenge, things change.
