Not notably a fan of any of his sporadic Hollywood outings, Jackie Chan has nevertheless been persuaded to get back in the saddle for a belated threequel. He's agreed to re-team with Owen Wilson for **Shanghai Dawn, reprising the role of Chon Wang ("terrible name for a cowboy") that he first played in Shanghai Noon (2000) and Shanghai Knights (2003).
The original kung-fu Western was a mismatched buddy comedy in which Chan's Chinese imperial guard was dispatched to the old west and forced to join forces with the laid back rascal Roy O'Bannon (Wilson) to rescue princess Lucy Liu. In the sequel the pair met again in Victorian London, on the hunt for the murderer of Chon Wang's father.
Both films were successful - although the second didn't take quite as much at the box office as the first - and Shanghai Dawn was being talked about even back then. "We met with the writers," Wilson told us at the time. "There's talk about going to Egypt. This does seem like a Hope/Crosby thing. You can put the characters in all different situations and it works."
Whether Egypt or, in another version, Africa remains on the cards has yet to be thrashed out, since the film is currently looking for new writers. Series creators Miles Millar and Alfred Gough are apparently not in the frame, having since moved onto other things (most notably Smallville, and more recently The Shannara Chronicles). There's no director in place yet either, but the project is being overseen for MGM by original producer Jonathan Glickman.