Bobby and Marty, Johns Ford and Wayne, QT and Uma, Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi… the list of great pairings in cinema is a long one – and it certainly isn't limited to Hollywood. Great news today then, that another legendary twosome, John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat, is set to re-team on Woo's period action project The Battle Of Red Cliff.
It'll be the first time the duo who brought us Hong Kong action classics like The Killer, A Better Tomorrow and Bullet In The Head have worked together since 1992's Hard Boiled (the one with the 20 minute shootout in a hospital, where Chow puts the cotton wool in the baby's ears), and the platinum line-up doesn't finish there. Tony Leung is also starring, and the script has been knocked into shape by one of Crouching Tiger's screenwriters, Wang Hui-Ling.
The story is taken from part of a huge Han dynasty novel called Romance Of The Three Kingdoms (no, we've not read it yet either), which is also the source material for another forthcoming Asian film, The Three Kingdoms, starring Andy Lau and Maggie Q.
The project has actually been teetering on the edge of the starting line for a while, with several studios trying to get it off the ground at one time or another, but they've all had trouble acquiring distribution rights in the Asian territories – a problem which has been all but overcome in the last few months.
The Battle Of Red Cliff is currently scheduled for release in 2008 (not least because Chow is filming Pirates 3 as we write this, and John's Christmas card pile isn't going to sign itself), with cameras set to start turning over from March 2007.