While we await news of Andrew Dominik‘s "Blonde" starring Jessica Chastain, which is supposed to start filming before the end of the year (more on that in a sec), the filmmaker is taking on another project, and an unlikely one at that.
Deadline reports that Dominik has been tapped to pen the script for Justin Lin‘s 3D remake of Jet Li‘s 1982 martial arts flick, "The Shaolin Temple." Yes, really. The story follows a lowly slave worker who trains with Shaolin monks and then uses his skills to kill the emperor of the Tang dynasty, a man who murdered his father (and also brutally took over the throne). The plan is to give it the tentpole treatment, with a budget of over $100 million. So…why is Dominik taking this on? We could think of a couple of reasons.
The gig probably pays pretty well, but more likely, it sounds like a fun exercise for the filmmaker. This is an opportunity to create on a canvas the size of which Dominik has never worked before, and as a screenwriter, that has to be a tremendously exciting prospect. It’ll allow him to exercise some totally different creative muscles, and it also opens up a few more networking doors, and, particularly for the kinds of movies Dominik makes, that can only be a good thing.
And as for "Blonde," last we heard Dominik was planning on shooting it in the fall, but we’re almost in the season and there’s been little in the way of updates. Hopefully those plans haven’t changed too much.
