Legendary Lees: Ang Lee to Direct Biopic on Bruce Lee

Oscar-winning director Ang Lee is set to direct an upcoming biopic on martial artist, actor and all-around Asian American icon Bruce Lee.

In addition to this coming together of legendary Lees, Ang Lee’s son Mason Lee is attached to star in the film. According to Variety, the film is in development at Sony’s 3000 Pictures and Dan Futterman, who wrote Capote and Foxcatcher, is adapting the script—earlier versions of the screenplay had been written by Jean Castelli, Alex Law and Mabel Cheung, and Wells Tower.

Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, along with Lawrence Grey, Ben Everard, Brian Bell, and Ang Lee are serving as producers, while Elizabeth Gabler and Marisa Paiva are overseeing the project for the studio, according to Variety.

It goes without saying that we here at JoySauce are huge fans of Bruce Lee, and are pumped to see how Ang Lee will immortalize the martial arts icon on film.

According to Deadline, the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon director, has “long wanted to delve into the making-of-a-legend tale.”

​​“Accepted as neither fully American nor fully Chinese, Bruce Lee was a bridge between East and West who introduced Chinese Kung Fu to the world, a scientist of combat and an iconic performing artist who revolutionized both the martial arts and action cinema,” Ang Lee told Deadline. “I feel compelled to tell the story of this brilliant, unique human being who yearned for belonging, possessed tremendous power in a 135-pound-frame, and who, through tireless hard work, made impossible dreams into reality.”

Despite being handsome, affable, a trailblazer, and an overall badass, Bruce Lee’s early career was filled with frustrations because of racism and discrimination. He may have been one of the first Chinese Americans to crack into prime time television, but the role was for Kato, the sidekick in The Green Hornet. One of the most infamous setbacks came in 1972, when white actor David Carradine was cast to play the Chinese monk in the show Kung Fu, over Bruce Lee. It’s also rumored that Bruce Lee came up with the idea for the show, pitching a show called The Warrior, which follows a Chinese immigrant and kung fu expert in the American Wild West, to Warner Brothers a year earlier—though nothing’s ever been proven.

This transgression by Hollywood was recently rectified with the release of Warrior (which is finally getting a third season!), a show based on an eight-page treatment written by Bruce Lee, which his daughter recently discovered. Shannon Lee is also attached to the show, so seeing her name as a producer for this upcoming biopic of her father is a promising sign that they’ll do Bruce Lee justice.