The writers of Ali and Nixon have been hired to write an “origin story” about Bruce Lee. Well, sort of. It actually sounds more like the origin of a story where Bruce Lee becomes some kind of crime-fighting Van Helsing, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
QED International and banner Groundswell Productions are aiming to tell a Bruce Lee origin story with Birth of the Dragon, tapping scribed Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen Rivele to pen the tale.
Birth of a Dragon, according to QED and Groundswell, is inspired by the true-life duel between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man, who was China’s most famous Kung Fu Master. The no-rules fight took place in San Francisco in 1965, when the city’s Chinatown was controlled by Hong Kong Triads.
Okay, so far so good… They already did a version of that in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, based on Linda Lee’s book, but I’d love to see a less biased version…
The writers are using this true event as a jumping off point for a wider canvas action movie in which Wong and Lee team up to battle a band of Chinatown gangsters.
“Stephen Rivele and Chris Wilkinson have taken a little known chapter in the life of Bruce Lee and used it as a jumping off point for a bold, exciting story about the making of an international legend,” said QED CEO Michael London in a statement. [THR]
Well sure, why depict a real, unique story with interesting characters and inherent drama when you can just slap the names on a Bruckheimer movie that everyone’s already seen? A movie about Bruce Lee? Pf, no one’s going to want to see that! Not unless you can turn it into a Chinese Gangster Squad with Kung Fu. It’s got the blandness people love, with the meaningless name recognition they demand.
Studio thinking at its finest.