For years there have been plans to film Bruce Lee’s life story. There’s a reason it went unheard of for so long: Ang Lee secretly worked to get the project off the ground. Together with Sony, he is now tackling the biopic, previously titled simply “Bruce Lee”. “Foxcatcher” and “Capote” author Dan Futterman is now reworking the previous script according to Ang Lee’s ideas, after a wide variety of writers worked on it over the years.
Ang Lee is now a distinguished director who has repeatedly proven that he can make great cinema. “Brokeback Mountain” and “Life Of Pi” are among the most famous movies in his vita. But of course that is also part of it “Tiger & Dragon‘, one of the best martial arts movies of all time. The title should make Ang Lee the perfect man for the job in the eyes of many. He already has a protagonist…
Mason Lee plays Bruce Lee to Ang Lee
Ang Lee’s son Mason Lee will embody Bruce Lee. As an actor you know him best from the role of Teddy in the comedy “Hangover 2”. He still has a small role in the sci-fi action movie “Lucy” with Scarlett Johansson. He also starred in Birds Of Prey director Cathy Yan’s Chinese drama Dead Pigs and black-and-white Hong Kong gritty action thriller Limbo, among others.
Lately he’s probably been doing one thing above all: Trained! Since Ang Lee has been secretly working on the project for a long time and probably had his son in mind for the lead role from the start, he was able to prepare for the role in the long run. Mason Lee has been training for about three years to believably embody on screen the greatest martial arts legend in movie history. He probably used the time during the corona pandemic extensively for this. People can’t wait to see what he looks like now and how little that has to do with “Hangover 2” sidekick Teddy.
“Bruce Lee” is not the first movie about the martial arts legend, who was born in the US, grew up in Hong Kong, then re-studied in the US and would have a lasting impact on action movies not only in both countries, but worldwide. The most famous to date is probably “Dragon – The Bruce Lee Story” by “The Fast And The Furious” director Rob Cohen from 1993. In Hong Kong, “Bruce Lee – The Legend of the Dragon” was created in 2010, with which Lee’s younger brother Robert personally wrote brought the way.
Bruce Lee has also recently appeared as a supporting character in several high profile movies – very briefly in “Ip Man 3” and then bigger in “Ip Man 4” and of course in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood”. It is not yet known when Ang Lee’s version will be shown in cinemas.