Tony Leung Will Not Film “The Grandmaster” Sequel
Supported by Hong Kong University’s Culture and Humanities Fund, a dialogue session for the film The Grandmaster <一代宗師> was held at the Hong Kong University on January 31. The session was attended by actor Tony Leung (梁朝偉), stunt coordinator Yuen Woo Ping (袁和平), and martial artist Lau Kar Yung (劉家勇).
Over one thousand tickets were given out to HKU students a few days prior to the session. All tickets were passed out in two hours. The waiting list for the session also exceeded 600 people.
At the session, Tony openly talked about his filming experience on the set of The Grandmaster. Tony remarked that although it had a tough three-year engagement, he did not regret the experience.
Art house director, Wong Kar Wai (王家衛), never really made movies for money, but The Grandmaster has now become his most commercially successful film in the box office. The film’s distributors are urging Wong to film a sequel, in which Wong is considering.
Tony is a longtime collaborator of Wong, but upon hearing that Wong is working on a sequel, Tony immediately shook his head. Wong and Tony were earlier rumored to have had a falling out due to a disagreement on the film’s script and filming style.
Tony insisted that he and Wong still get along really well; nonetheless, he expressed that he will not film The Grandmaster sequel if it is to be made. The 50-year-old actor explained, “I want to try new things. I like staying fresh. If I do the same things over and over again, it won’t be fun.”
As The Grandmaster took over three years to film, many actors in the film, including Tony and female lead Zhang Ziyi (章子怡), had complained about the harsh struggles in working on the film. Song Hye Kyo (宋慧喬) was also reportedly upset with Wong’s lurching and dragging filming ways, and declined to participate in the film’s promotions.
Source: Oriental Daily
This article is written by Addy for JayneStars.com.
I don’t think he can take another 3 years to film a movie.
Exactly my thoughts as well lol. And Wong Kar Wai would try to outdo the original, Tony would be in his mid 50’s by the time they’re done!
Exactly. Once is enough.
It’s really interesting nearly every news item promoting the movie has had to mention Song Hye Kyo’s rumored dissatisfaction. Of course I wouldn’t blame her 🙂 I await to see whether the 3 years of supposed training were actually necessary.
SDS,
The filming took 3 years on and off to film, in which Tony filmed “The Silent War” in between. The stars likely resumed their martial arts only while working on “The Grandmaster” so it was not truly 3 full years of training.
I haven’t seen the film yet, but as in most martial arts films, the most intricate hand-to-hand combat and footwork scenes are usually done by stunt doubles anyway.
3 years to film something is not ideal at all. Were they paid more for their extra time? I don’t think needing to take that long is efficient at all. Being a “perfectionist” is not a good enough reason for wasting everyone’s time.
crap show , the whole cinema either fall asleep of leave before it ends
Considering how much time it took to produce this movie it sure was a disappointment.
Prolly watched 50% of it before I had to give up bc it was just too boring.
It’s time to find another grandmaster bc master Ip is tired, LOL
Tony Leung should stop working with WKW. WKW’s movies are so dull and boring.