It started filming in December 2009, and two-and-a-half years later, Wong Kar-Wai's "The Grandmaster" is still in front of cameras. We won't bore you with the details of the various stops and starts of the production over the past couple years, but needless to say, the highly anticipated movie has taken on Malick-ian proportions. Earlier this spring there appeared to be some kind of light at the end of tunnel when the film was dated with a December 18th release date in China, but that came with a caveat, with producers adding there the movie was headed to back for more shooting in May. And it appears it's still lensing.
Over the past couple of days, various Asian outlets have reported about Wong Kar-Wai's 54th birthday on Wednesday, adding along with it that "Zhang Ziyi posted the birthday celebration photo from the set." Yes, from the set (you can check out the image below). Even with a hard date now on the books, "The Grandmaster" is apparently "in a hurry to wrap up production." So, Wong Kar-Wai is still on the set with five months to go before the film hits theaters — but that shouldn't necessarily be cause for alarm. We wouldn't be surprised if he is editing concurrently, and it's not always unusual in this day for directors to be coming in under a tight deadline. That said, Wong Kar-Wai generally moves at his own speed, so we'll see how this unfolds in the next little while.
Either way the film — a biopic of legendary martial artist Ip Man (Tony Leung), a legendary master of Wing Chun who taught Bruce Lee, among many others — isn't going make its way to U.S. theaters until 2013 at the earliest, so we still have a long wait ahead of us. So just take this all as a slight update for now, and just hope that the December 18th date holds. [via WongKongWai.net]