Donnie Yen of Ip Man and Rogue One fame said the Sleeping Dogs movie no one’s heard anything about for some time is still in motion on social media yesterday.
“Sometimes great things take a bit of time,” the actor and martial artists said in an Instagram post. “Sleeping Dog is motion, you guys ready for this?” It was reported last March that a movie adaptation of the game was in the nascent stages and would be starring Yen, presumably as Wei Shen, the game’s undercover cop protagonist. Video game movies are notorious for getting kicked around but never actually making it past the pre-production phase.
Deadline’s report said the movie would be produced by Original Film in conjunction with DJ2 Entertainment, a company best known for signing on to optioned video game adaptations, including most recently for the little known indie cyberpunk game, Ruiner.
It’s also involved in the fabled live-action Sonic movie which apparently ramped up activity in the second half of last year.
Unlike a lot of rumoured video game movie projects though, Sleeping Dogs is a pretty straightforward proposition. The surprisingly decent 2012 open world action game is set in Hong Kong and follows the exploits of Shen who has been tasked with going undercover and taking down the Sun On Yee Triad organisation.
Compared to super fast hedgehogs and superhuman space marines, it’s pretty standard martial arts action fare.
And I mean, if they can make a movie starring an electrical rodent detective voice by Ryan Reynolds, why not Sleeping Dogs?
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9 responses to “Rogue One Star Says Sleeping Dogs Movie Is Still Happening ”
I freaking love Donnie Yen, but the man’s in his mid 50s. He’s perhaps a touch too old to play Wei Shen.
That said, I’d still watch and probably buy this.
Will Yun Lee would be perfect for this role…. Still gutted we didnt get a second one.
I’d never looked up the voice actor, but yeah… I’m down with that. His action reel on YT looks pretty good. Actually, looking down the list, you could almost cast the movie entirely based on the voice actors.
I looked up the voice actor the other day, why the hell would you cast this old bogus IP guy….??
The voice actor is perfect for the role, it seems like the developers actually modeled wei shen on him in the first place.
Its probably going to be “loosely based” on the game anyway, aka Michael Bay so it probably doesn’t matter anyway.
It’s one of those horrible double edged swords when it comes to a lot of movies based on video games. They cast someone recognisable sometimes over someone who would look and feel like a better fit because they are trying so hard to be successful.
I would no doubt think they could find a better suited HK actor who is younger to play the character but they would be too worried about the movie being overlooked because its based on a game and features an unrecognisable lead.
The easiest answer is to just watch Infernal Affairs which Sleeping Dogs was based on.
Internal Affairs, Departed, Double Face.
Pick your poison, really..
As long as the pork bun guy’s in it I’ll be happy.
a man who never eats a pork bun is never truly a man