Thompson On Hollywood

Hong Kong Stars: Unstoppable

Richard Corliss explains why Hong Kong stars like The Forbidden Kingdom's Jet Li and Jackie Chan are unstoppable.

ShoWest: Summer Preview

Every year ShoWest screens an honor reel of movies that grossed over $100-million the year before. Which of the 2008 ShoWest promo pics will be on next year's reel?

Based on what I saw and reactions gleaned, here's my best guess:

Movie that could pass $300 million: the sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which will likely improve on its predecessor with more action and more mature protagonists.

Movies that could go well past $200 million: sequels The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, starring Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf, Rob Cohen's China-shot Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, and Guillermo del Toro's epic-scale actioner Hellboy II: The Golden Army; plus non-sequels Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman as assassins training rookie James McAvoy, the invulnerable Will Smith as a homeless hero in Hancock, Judd Apatow's dumb male comedy Step Brothers, starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, Marvel's Iron Man, which boasts femme appeal via Robert Downey Jr. and co-star Gwenyth Paltrow, and animated family originals Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks Animation) and Wall-E (Disney/Pixar).

Movies that could break $100 million: a remake of Marvel's The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton as a thinking man's Bruce Banner; for the femme audience, a remake of the HBO classic Sex and the City, a remake of the boomer TV show Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Ann Hathaway, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's surrogate nightmare comedy Baby Mama, and a movie version of the Broadway musical Mamma Mia (also for musical fans); Judd Apatow factory comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express; Ben Stiller's starry R-rated action comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Stiller, Downey, Jack Black and Steve Coogan; the frere Wachowski's adaptation of the anime classic Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci; and George Lucas's animated sequel Star Wars: The Clone Wars. (Am I the only one who feels a shock that the film is going out through Warners? Even though Lucasfilm controls and markets the movies and collects the lions' share of the take, I feel like all Star Wars movies are supposed to have the Fox fanfare in front of them.)

Mummy 3, Red Cliff, Forbidden Kingdom Shoot in China

The China Film Group, which wields an unusual amount of clout over who can do what and where moviewise in China, is going public. The more I learn about this mysterious organization, the more I want to know.

One person who seems to understand its workings is producer Bill Kong, who is featured in my column on how Hollywood is taking big-budget productions to China, including Rob Cohen's The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh; and Rob Minkoff's The Forbidden Kingdom, starring Li and Jackie Chan. It took four Asian countries to finance John Woo's $80-million Red Cliff, starring Tony Leung.

Here's The Forbidden Kingdom trailer. The movie opens April 18.

Trailer Watch: The Forbidden Kingdom

With The Forbidden Kingdom, Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, Stewart Little) takes on a martial arts action adventure laced with humor--and Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan. And in the upcoming epic-scale sequel The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story) filmed in Beijing and Shanghai, another historic martial arts confrontation takes place: between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. Lionsgate and The Weinstein Co. release the Forbidden Kingdom April 18; Universal opens Mummy 3, which just wrapped, on August 1.

Here's an unofficial, non-studio, non-pro Mummy 3 teaser (the studio hasn't finalized its first trailer yet):