Eddie Peng’s “Rise of the Legend” Captures International Attention

Rise of the Legend <黃飛鴻之英雄有夢>, which stars Taiwanese actor Eddie Peng (彭于晏) as martial arts legend Wong Fei Hung (黃飛鴻), recently released a two-minute sneak peek, giving viewers their first look at the movie’s action shots. Since being featured at FILMART and at last year’s American Film Market conference, Rise of the Legend has attracted interest from all sorts of audiences, including potential overseas buyers.

The two-minute sneak peek of Rise of the Legend was first unveiled at a recent national cinema promotional event held in Fuzhou, where fans also glimpsed an exciting new poster of Eddie as the titular character. In the poster, Eddie is clothed in a sleeveless shirt, showing off his well-toned arms. Mingled on his chest are blood and rain, while behind him stands a crowd of menacing thugs armed with knives.

Participants at the event expressed their approval of the action scenes in Rise of the Legend, an opinion shared by many overseas audiences. At the 2013 American Film Market conference, Rise of the Legend drew much attention because of the shortage in international kung fu films. Buyers from the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia expressed interest, and in some cases, businesses from the same region even fought over the copyright.

For executive producer William Kong (江志强), the positive response to Rise of the Legend is proof that he made the right decision to film an adaptation of the life of Wong Fei Hung. As head of Edko Films, Kong is no stranger to the wuxia genre, having backed well-known films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon <臥虎藏龍>, Hero <英雄>, House of Flying Daggers <十面埋伏>, and Curse of the Golden Flower <滿城盡帶黃金甲>. However, he feels that there has recently been a lack in kung fu stars and films – a situation that he hopes to remedy with Rise of the Legend.

Rise of the Legend, which is directed by Roy Chow (周顯揚), is “very rough and very violent,” according to Kong. Nevertheless, he believes that the movie can use modern methods to tell the classic story of a national hero and produce a kung fu film that belongs to this era.

Apart from Eddie, Rise of the Legend also features Sammo Hung (洪金寳), Wang Luodan (王珞丹), and Angelababy (楊穎). The film is expected to be released at the end of 2014.

Source: QQ.com

This article is written by Joanna for JayneStars.com.