It is an indisputable fact that the world will simply never get tired of watching Donnie Yen kick ass, and any continued opportunity to watch Donnie Yen kick ass is an endeavor we support. That includes Sleeping Dogs, an adaptation of the action-adventure game that Yen has been trying to get off the ground for years now. So when Collider's Steve Weintraub spoke to the actor for his new action film, Raging Fire, we also had to get a Sleeping Dogs update.
Luckily, Yen still feels pretty confident. Here's exactly what he told us.
"I'm still hopeful. I mean, every day they tell me it's going to happen. I'm co-producing and collaborating with [producers] Neil Moritz and Toby [Ascher], with their company, and currently talking with a couple of big platforms. And they tell me every single day it's going to happen, so we'll see. Like I said, I believe in destiny. So, if it's going to happen, hopefully, it will happen the first half of next year."
Released in 2012, Sleeping Dogs sees players controlling Wei Shen, an undercover Hong Kong cop infiltrating the Triad through a combination of hand-to-hand combat, gunplay, and parkour. The game first came to Yen's attention while he was making 2014's Iceman, immediately noticing the style and gameplay felt like a direct homage to his own classic work.
"Honestly, it was like this. I did a film that I'm not very proud of. We all make them, shitty films, right? I made a film called The Iceman, a few years ago, right? One of the producers came to me and said, "Oh, you know, Donnie, I saw this game. This game is perfect." [H]e showed me the cover, and the guy actually looked a little like what I did in my other films, right? And I looked at some of the clips, the way they fight. 'Hey, there's some of my moves.' And then I did some research, and I found some article saying that...the people who created this game, created a world, they're fans of mine. They pretty much borrowed some of my actions, and even the image.
And I said, 'Oh, that could be a fun vehicle.' Because like I said, I was caught in that 12, 13 years of the Ip Man image. I want to go back to...contemporary action. When I look at this material, I said, 'Wow. This could be a perfect contemporary action world that I could do.' And it already has a fan base, right? It's Infernal Affairs. It's Flash Point. It got all of those elements. Kind of like Raging Fire, but even more edgier because I'm playing an undercover [cop]. I could do so many things."
Yen notes that he does have the filmmaking rights to Sleeping Dogs, and that the current conversations—which he told us has been a few years of "talking and talking and talking"—are centered around whether to directly adapt the game or simply take elements of it to make an original story. "Most likely," he said, "we're probably gonna' make more of a modern, updated version of Sleeping Dogs."
On the subject of possibly turning the film into a franchise, Yen continued:
"I have different conversations with so many peoples involved, to a point where, let me just get this movie going first. Because it's like, I don't want to lose my fire, this raging fire, [that] I still have a bit, that we still have with Sleeping Dogs. I think it's going to be really fun. I can visualize the whole look of this film. It's going to be something very special. But let me just focus on getting this film made first."
Check out exactly what Yen told us in the player above and look for our full interview with him soon. Raging Fire is currently in theaters.