Yes, you read that right. Fully rested up following the flying gymnast / CGI fireworks jamboree that was the Beijing Olympics 2008, Zhang Yimou has embarked on his next project: a Hong Kong transposition of the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple.
San Qiang Pi An Jing Qi, which we're told roughly translates as The Stunning Case of the Three Gunshots, went before cameras on June 9th. It stars Sun Hong Lei (Seven Swords), and will be Zhang's first film since the camp-as-Christmas Curse of the Golden Flower in 2006.
Zhang's recent CV is all about massively colourful martial arts spectacle (Hero, House of Flying Daggers), so it's hard to immediately see quite how the Coens' dry-humoured slow-burn is going to translate. But step back a few years to before Zhang's wushu, scrapping-on-wires phase and you start to see how it might work. Are we looking at a return to Zhang's more contemporary movies like 1997's black comedy Keep Cool?
Blood Simple's twisty plot about a love triangle, a private detective, and murders real and faked, could work in a number of ways. The Coens' approach was a tongue-in-cheek noir (the title comes from Dashiel Hammett) but the plot could equally be transmogrified into a much broader farce. Chinese comedian Xiao Shenyang is reported to be on board. We'll tip him for M. Emmett Walsh's role as the sleazy PI (named Loren Visser in the original, but only in the end credits). But then, Dan Hedaya was pretty funny too...