What do you get when you bring together some of the biggest stars in Hong Kong, a famed director, and a record smashing budget? Well according to this weekends box office receipts the answer is boat loads of money. Who’d of figured? John Woo’s much hyped return to the HK film industry the historical epic Red Cliff has pulled in north of $25 million from six East Asian territories including South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong since Thursday. According to Variety Asia the film even set an opening day record for a Chinese release in South Korea with 139,000 admissions, a stunning 57% increase from the previous record of 60,000 admissions set by Zhang Yimou’s The House of Flying Daggers.
The film is a more historically balanced take on the classic Three Kingdoms period in China’s history, when the country was ruled by three emperors from approximately 220 – 280 B.C. The period is a popular one both in local literature and cinema often fictionalized through the Romance of The Three Kingdoms interpretation of the period as seen earlier this year in the Andy Lau starrer Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon. Set in 208 B.C., Red Cliff portrays the Battle of Chibi (considered the greatest military act in China’s long history) that brought an end to the Han Dynasty forming the Three Kingdoms. The film was a longtime passion project for Woo, telling the press at a news conference in Hong Kong “I have wanted to make this film for almost 20 years. James Wong Jim suggested I make a film about the war in 1986, but due to funding problems, it couldn’t be done. After Wong’s death, I felt a strong urge to make it happen.” Not just a labor of love, the film is also the director’s first Hong Kong film since his seminol actioner Hard-Boiled in 1992. It’s also his first feature since 2003’s aptly titled Paycheck, a film made all the more worse when you look at all of the talent involved. It’s safe to say Holywood did more harm than good for Woo’s career as he was mired in making light retreads of his iconic action films with 100 times the budget but with 1/100 of the ingenuity. Plus he made a couple of flicks with Nicolas Cage, who while occasionally great I think we can all agree he’s no Chow Yun-Fat (especially with a gun).
At $80 million the picture is the most expensive ever produced in the region, adding tremendous pressure on all involved to deliver a huge hit. The project has been the subject of great tumult almost from the get go. Originally set to finally reunite the director with Chow Yun-Fat (The Curse of the Golden Flower), the actor left the project under mysterious circumstances, though he has stated it was due to having received the script a mere week before the start of production leaving him no time to prepare. Tony Leung (2046) soon left the production due to “scheduling conflicts” and was replaced by Takeshi Kaneshiro (Warlords). In an amazing turn around, Leung returned to the production taking over Chow’s role as Zhou Yu. All told the producers put together a killer cast with Chen Chang (Three Times), Shido Nakamura (Letters from Iwo Jima), Zhao Wei (Green Tea), and former model Chiling Lin in her film debut. The production was even hit by tragedy as a 23-year old stuntman died in a boating stunt accident. The result: a 4 ½ hour epic split into two parts with a world of hype and expectations to live up to. Luckily, the critical response has been generally positive with The Hollywood Reporter lauding the film’s climax as a “sequence that has the speed and grandeur of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai classics.”
Plans have already been made to release Red Cliff outside of Asia as a single 2 ½ hour film, which will likely send fans clamoring to importers to grab the eventual DVD for the full cut. Summit Entertainment is shopping the property around for prospective distributors but no announcements have been made. You can be sure The Weinstein Company will make an offer as they do for every major Asian release. Given their track record with their acquisitions we can only hope they aren’t granted the rights. Miramax will likely be in the mix as well, but if I had to choose I would go with either Focus Films or even Picturehouse who have been doing a bang-up job with the similarly epic Mongol. Either way I wouldn’t expect a domestic release until next summer at the earliest since the second half isn’t set to hit theatres internationally until January.
