Donnie Yen makes legal strike against makers of terrible Iceman film
- Reputation of the action superstar ‘severely harmed’ by a blog post accusing Yen of ruining new film Iceman: The Time Traveler
- War of words fails to spark ticket sales for the box office flop.
Action superstar Donnie Yen has taken legal action against his latest film’s official blog host, saying its accusations against him have damaged his reputation.
In a legal letter released by a Beijing law firm on November 13, Yen took issue with the official blog host of Iceman: The Time Traveler (aka The Frozen Hero II) for releasing an article on Weibo that panned Yen for changing script dialogue at will, refusing to do reshoots and wear wigs, being imperious, and interfering with the work of production crew. The article was released on November 3.
“Through Weibo and social forums, the untrue sayings [in the Weibo article] were widely spread around … and have led to adverse effects in society, have severely harmed Donnie Yen’s reputation, and have caused much distress for Yen, his family, working partners and fans,” Yen’s legal letter read.
The dispute can be traced to the poor performance of Iceman: The Time Traveler, released in China on November 2. As of November 15 the movie had earned 34 million yuan (US$4.9 million) at the China box office, a blatant flop when movies boasting similarly stellar cast can easily take in hundreds of millions of yuan in ticket sales in the first week of release.
The blog post apologised to director Raymond Yip Wai-man and scriptwriter Manfred Wong for the film’s poor performance and absolved them from blame.