Tony Jaa must be officially out of the jungle now because after finishing the long awaited TOM YUM GOONG 2 and in the midst of shooting THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS 7 and a Dolph Lundgren movie called SKIN TRADE he just announced this on Facebook:
I am really excited to tell you that I will be starring in SPL 2, the sequel to the action thriller SPL (Sha Po Lang). I am equally excited to have Wu Jen the star of Legendary Assassin as my co-star. There are some really neat additional cast members that you will hear about soon and the action will be amazing. SPL 2 will shoot next Spring after I finish the shoot of Skin Trade with my friend Dolph Lundgren.
In case you don’t recognize the name, SPL is the Donnie Yen/Sammo Hung movie that both I and Paul really enjoyed under the Weinsteinized title KILL ZONE. So this might be the long rumored collaboration between Hung and Jaa. IMDb still lists Hung as returning. It has original director Wilson Yip listed as producer, with Pou-Soi Cheang (who recently finished THE MONKEY KING with Yen and Chow Yun Fat) directing.
SKINTRADE is one Dolph’s been trying to make for a while. He co-write it, but the director will be Ekachai Uekrongtham (BEAUTIFUL BOXER).
Jaa has been practicing his English and seems to be enjoying himself, posting lots of great pictures of himself on Facebook and Twitter. There’s lot of training and fight stills plus him posing with some of our favorite action stars. Here he is with Dolph, wearing the greatest pants of all time. Here’s what he and JCVD did before dinner. Somewhere in there there’s one with Michael Jai White, and he claims to have been a huge fan of SPAWN growing up.
here’s the full Facebook post with a goofy picture of Jaa and Wu Jen (aka Wu Jing or Jacky Wu) posing together.
November 15th, 2013 at 3:52 pm
I was all set to be excited, but then I saw Pou-Soi Cheang’s name. He’s the guy who did Dog Bite Dog and Shamo, which both give the distinct impression that he HATES action. Too bad. This could have been good.