Michelle Yeoh to return in "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" prequel

Home-grown international superstar, Michelle Yeoh will be starring in the prequel Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as the heroine Yu Shu Lien, which will begin shooting in July.

The film by the Weinstein Company, titled “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon II: The Green Destiny”, is expected to shoot in New Zealand and China.

“The film is to be directed by Yuen Woo-ping, the veteran martial arts ace who was action choreographer on the original 2000 film,” reported the Variety paper.

Much of the principal photography will be in Auckland Film Studios, New Zealand as the Pinewood Iskandar Malaysia studios are occupied until the end of the year by the “Marco Polo” TV series for Netflix.

Additionally, New Zealand has substantial production incentives for large budget films shot in New Zealand.

The New Zealand Screen production Grant is the new rule introduced recently- where feature films which spend more than NZ$15 million (RM42 million) in the country can receive a rebate of 20% of local expenditure. Previously, the rebate was only worth 15%.

“The Green Destiny” draws on several of the books by Wang Dulu which was also used as a source material for the first film.

“But plans for a prequel were delayed by a row over the film rights to Wang Du Lu's novels, on which the film was based,” reports the BBC.

The prequel is scripted by John Fusco who wrote “The Forbidden Kingdom” starred by Jet Li and Jackie Chan.

The film Crouching Tiger hidden Dragon is the most successful international Mandarin film which grossed around US$250 million, with US$128 million alone in North America. It won four Oscars in 2001 for Best Foreign Film and three other technical awards.

It launched the Taiwanese director, Ang Lee’s career into Hollywood. He then won Best Director at the Academy Awards for Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi.