After more than a decade in the making and three years in production, Wong Kar-wai's much-anticipated action film The Grandmasters will premiere in Hong Kong tonight and open in cinemas on Thursday.
Wong, alongside actors Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Zhang Ziyi , Chang Chen and Zhang Jin, will attend the premiere of the film - which depicts the life story of wing chun grandmaster Yip Man - at UA Cinema in Tsim Sha Tsui's iSquare shopping mall. At a press preview in Beijing on Sunday, Leung and Zhang Ziyi bemoaned the difficulties three years of filming entailed. Zhang joked she would consider retiring from action films as she was getting old.
THE GRANDMASTERS trailer (with English subtitles)
Leung, 47, recounted suffering from multiple bone injuries and an inflamed trachea after a 30-day round-the-clock filming session. He said he could hardly believe it when Wong announced that the production was finally complete.
But something positive came out of all the kung fu practice for Taiwanese actor Chang, who plays a master of baji quan, a form of martial art that originated in Hebei province during the Qing dynasty. He recently won a national martial arts competition on the mainland.