With shamed Fan out, '355' still needs to sign up a star
BEIJING: With disgraced actress Fan Bingbing taken out of the movie 355, the race is on to find her replacement.
Judging from statements from showbiz regulators in Beijing, Fan is very likely to be banned from appearing in movies for at least three years.
Producers of 355, the international all-female action movie, are prepared to fire and replace her. For now, the team is content to watch and wait, with production not expected to begin until next year.
Any decision would specifically be made to please Huayi Brothers, the entertainment company that paid US$20 million (RM84 million) in May for the rights to release 355 in mainland China when the deal was packaged out of the Cannes Film Festival.
While the film will also star Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz and Marion Cotillard, a top Chinese star would be crucial for any mainland distributor to recoup such a high rights fee.
The state could also impose a media ban on Fan, as it did in 2007 with Tang Wei, the breakout star of Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution. Tang was removed from all cinematic prints and advertisements for the film and did not work again for three years.
A US$130 million bill for unpaid taxes, late fees and fines, and an empty dance card are not Fan’s only woes. “The bigger issue for Huayi and other producers is how uncertain public reaction will be. The public is not sympathetic to those who have flouted the law,” Clayton Dube, director of the US-China Institute at USC Annenberg, says of 355’s commercial prospects in China.
“She’s in a slightly different category, because she wasn’t taking public money,” Dube added. “But she’s not contributing to the public purse. That’s still corruption.”
She’s (Fan’s) in a slightly different category, because she wasn’t taking public money. But she’s not contributing to the public purse.That’s still corruption. Clayton Dube, director of the US-China Institute at USC Annenberg