14 Aug 2002

Highbinders: Both Chans unhappy about US decisions

Yesterday Hong Kong's The Sun reported Columbia Pictures, the international distributor of  Jackie Chan's newest Hong Kong production HIGHBINDERS (except Asia and France), has rejected the delivery of the movie  because some dialogues had been changed without their permission. When being interviewed by Shenzhen's Nanfang Daily, director Gordon Chan tried to set the record straight. He said, "The American are satisfied by the cut we have right now and don't want Jackie Chan and I to alter it any further. To them, the action sequences are good enough, but Jackie and I think the story is still not strong. Columbia won't give us any more time because they has reserved a timeslot for it (May, 2003?).

We have been arguing on this for a while. Jackie and I decided, if we can't resolved it, we will make two versions the movie as the last resort, because majority of the audiences is still in Asia." When being asked whether it was because the Americans could not understand the Chinese style funny dialogues, he said "not just that, changing dialogues is not the vital point, it is more about the cultural difference." None of the the screenwriters are Chinese and possibly, some dialogues from the script have been changed to let Jackie Chan talk more like a Chinese. Gordon Chan said they has originally planned to release it in Asia next February (around the coming Chinese New Year), but due to the delay, now he was only hoping the CG effects could be done by the end of this year.