'Sleeping Dogs' Casting News: Donnie Yen to Play Lead in Video Game Film Adaptation
Martial artist Donnie Yen is set to portray the lead role in "Sleeping Dogs," an upcoming film based on the 2012 video game of the same name released by Square Enix.
According to Deadline, the "Ip Man" star will be joining the cast of the game's film adaptation which will be developed by Neal Moritz's ("The Fate of the Furious") production company, Original Film.
"Sleeping Dogs" will be set in Hong Kong, with Yen potentially portraying the video game's lead character Wei Shen, an undercover cop on a mission to bring down one of the most powerful and dangerous criminal organizations in the world: the Sun On Yee Triad.
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As in the original video game, the movie adaptation will reportedly feature a lot of martial arts sequences as well as racing and boat-chasing scenes.
Original Film is producing the movie with DJ2 Entertainment, with Moritz, Dmitri Johnson and Dan Jevons serving as producers. On the other hand, Toby Ascher and Stephan Bugaj will be executive producing.
An accomplished Chinese martial artist, fight choreographer and actor, Yen is best known to international audiences as the star of the "Ip Man" film franchise, portraying the role of the Wing Chun grandmaster who trained Bruce Lee. He became even more recognized for his portrayal of the blind fighter Chirrut Imwe in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story." He also recently appeared in "xXx 3: Return of Xander Cage" as Xiang.
"Sleeping Dogs" is an open world action-adventure game developed by United Front Games and Square Enix London for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the Windows PC. A remastered version – the "Definitive Edition" – was released in 2014 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC. A spinoff game titled "Triad Wars" was also reported to be in development, but said plans did not come to fruition.
The upcoming film adaptation of "Sleeping Dogs" has no official release date yet.
