‘LITTLE DRAGON’ TO BE SHOT IN PENANG
Daughter plans to start filming next month
PENANG will be on the silver screen again when Little Dragon ,a film featuring legendary martial arts star Bruce Lee in his teenage years, hits theatres next year. Penangites may be chosen to play extras in the filming, which begins next month and ends in November.
Lee’s daughter, Shannon, who is co-producing the film, said Penang had the perfect setting to replicate her father’s childhood in Hong Kong in the 1950s.
“The natural setting here, and particularly the old buildings, are perfect for our filming,” she said after paying a courtesy call on Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng at his office yesterday.
Shannon said the production crew had been going to the ground for weeks now.
She said the film would focus on the life of her father as a teenager, his influences and as a champion cha-cha dancer.
“It will be an original story of my father’s teenage years.”
Four candidates were chosen to play Lee’s role from the initial 5,000 candidates who auditioned during a worldwide search over the past seven months.
A Malaysian is among one of the four candidates chosen.
Little Dragon will also be shot at Pinewood Iskandar Studios in Johor Baru and Guangzhou in China.
Lee was born in San Francisco, California, in the United States but was raised in Kowloon, Hong Kong, during his teenage years.
He died on July 20, 1973, aged 32.
Lee’s father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was a famous Cantonese opera star, and, because of this, the junior Lee had an early introduction to films and appeared in several films as a child.
His first role was as a baby who was carried on to the stage in the film, Golden Gate Girl.
By the time he was 18, Lee had appeared in 20 films.
Lee is notable for his roles in five feature-length films — Lo Wei’s The Big Boss (1971) and Fist of Fury (1972); Golden Harvest’s Way of the Dragon (1972), directed and written by Lee; Golden Harvest and Warner Brothers’ Enter the Dragon (1973) and Game of Death (1978), both directed by Robert Clouse.