Last week, Simu Liu revealed on Twitter that he was working to revive the Sleeping Dogs movie. Now, Liu and Tim Tjahjanto have shed some light on what’s happened to this project for all these years.
For those who don’t remember, Tjahjanto was tapped to direct the long gestating Sleeping Dogs project, which would have starred Donnie Yen. You may not know Tjahjanto by name, but if you caught films like V/H/S/2, The Shadow Strays, or The Night Comes For Us, you’ve had a taste for his specialty in grindhouse crowd pleasing horror and action movies.
Over the weekend, Simu Liu shared a new tweet about this upcoming project:
“So few film projects make it from pitch phase to greenlight. Pitching execs who don’t understand the game has been tiring. Everyone’s overwhelming love of Sleeping Dogs here has really given us life!
First a movie, then a sequel game for everyone… that’s always been the dream.”
Tjahjanto then responded to Liu’s tweet with a little revelation of his own:
“Good luck brother, and yes the biggest problem with it has always been it’s at the hands of people (execs) who don’t get what SLEEPING DOGS is all about .
The drafts I’ve seen…”
Liu then replied to him:
“I’ve read those same drafts bro. SMH”
This seemed to have prompted Tjahjanto to share a picture of one of those drafts that he has in his hands. Not that there was any reason for him to lie about it, but if anyone had any doubts, Tjahjanto has dropped evidence that he was really working on a Donnie Yen movie.
Tjahjanto revealed that the script he had was five years old, and then he said this:
“Its a pretty damn good read, but its not a Sleeping Dog story , which is funny because alot of The Night Comes for Us are paying homage to SD.
Down to costumes.”
For those who are now curious, The Night Comes for Us is an Indonesian crime thriller set in a fictional seedy underground. The story certainly isn’t exactly the same as Sleeping Dogs, but you will see how Tjahjanto’s film does take thematic and even aesthetic cues from the game, as well as their common inspiration of 1980s – 1990s Hong Kong crime action films. You can watch it on Netflix.
All of this certainly makes one wonder what was going on with the people in Square Enix, who would be the rights owners of this game. Perhaps their management still feels the scars from 2001’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, their bold attempt to take on Hollywood that was so disastrous that it could have ended the company.
But we should remember that Square Enix didn’t really conceive this game. It was actually the people at United Front Games and its original publisher, Activision. While we are grateful that Square Enix took the risk to publish Sleeping Dogs, they may have become too risk averse to realize this franchise’s potential. Surprisingly, it’s the people at Hollywood, who actually have passion for the game, who seem to be here to save the day.
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