Tsui Hark to film Brigitte Lin biopic

Can Cecilia measure up to Brigitte?

Tsui Hark, fresh off the premiere of his new wuxia flick The Seven Swords, has finally received permission from Brigitte Lin to film The Brigitte Lin Story. And the actress he’s fingered to play Ms. Lin is Cecilia Cheung.

It’s a bit hard to imagine Cecilia commanding the same sort of steely fierceness that made Brigitte such an effective star in wuxia roles like Asia Invincible; Cecilia’s cross-dressing has been played for laughs rather than for menace. And though Cecilia played Brigitte’s character in the remake of Zu Mountain, it’s hard to compare the two since the second movie was such a mess. Fortuantely the biopic will only cover Ms. Lin’s early years, probably up to the point when she was plucked off the street to star in Outside the Window.

This isn’t the first association between the two actresses; back in 2000 it was rumored that they were to appear in a movie together as mother and daughter. It’s also a bit strange to shoot a biography of an actress who’s still alive and only just turned 50. But Ms. Lin hasn’t appeared in a movie since 1994, and given the current state of the HK film industry, maybe nostalgia is the order of the day.

Meanwhile, on the guy movie side of things, a confluence of action stars is set to shake the universe to its very core. Ken Watanabe, Chow Yun-fat, Andy Lau, and Tony Leung will star in The Battle of Red Cliffs, a Three-Kingdoms adaptation directed by John Woo.