Ir seems like the Sleeping Dogs movie is slowly shifting into gear. Long thought trapped in the developmental limbo shared so many of its peers, star Donnie Yen very much confirms the Sleeping Dogs movie is on the horizon.
Yen, most recently of Star Wars: Rogue One, took to Instagram to unveil a promotional shot of himself in a Sleeping Dogs-style pose, i.e. tight jeans, whilst looking all angsty as rain pours overhead.
The Instagram post also comes with a caption from Yen stating ‘Sometimes great things take a bit of time. Sleeping Dog is motion, you guys ready for this?’ There’s even a #kickass hashtag to confirm that, yes, this movie will kick some ass, in case you weren’t sure.
Alongside his most recent run in a galaxy far, far away, Yen is a household name in the East thanks to his role in martial-arts biopic Ip Man, which proved he had both the acting and chops and, uhh, the chop chops for the role.
The original 2012 game saw gamers play as Wei Shen, an officer in the Hong Kong Police who goes undercover to try and take down the Triads. Along the way, the lines between good and evil, cop and criminal get blurred. It’s a movie trope we’ve seen a thousand times, but not with Donnie Yen busting some heads together, so here’s hoping it’ll actually be good.
Video game movies in pre-production can be a fickle beast, often lost to the sands of time (except, ironically, that god-awful Prince of Persia movie) so it’s great to see some forward momentum on the part of Yen, at least, to get the Sleeping Dogs movie off the ground.
With Yen on board and a property that can be molded to suit many purposes (imagine The Raid meets Yakuza with a dash of The Departed thrown in for a good measure), it’s entirely possible we could be seeing the seeds of a surefire hit being sprouted.