Dear Gossips,   

There was a huge gathering of major movie stars in Hong Kong last week at the Filmart event for the presentation of the Emperor Motion Pictures 2023 slate of productions, featuring a rare appearance by Jackie Chan to announce that he will be producing and starring in New Police Story 2. If you’re familiar with his work, you know that the Police Story movie franchise, which started in the 80s, is probably considered his greatest cinematic legacy to date – the stunts he choreographed and performed in those films are still influencing action scenes today around the world, most recently Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg’s Uncharted which opened last year. New Police Story 2 will be directed by Nicholas Tse who is also a superstar in his own right. 

 

For me, though, the most exciting matchup at HK Filmart was the reunion of Tony Leung and Andy Lau for their upcoming project, The Goldfinger. It’s the first time they’ve worked together in 20 years, since the end of the Infernal Affairs series. These two are LEGENDS of Asian cinema. They started out on local HK television, when they were barely out of their teens. So they’ve known each other, and known each other well, for four decades. 

Many now know Tony because of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. But his impact precedes the MCU. Because Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2007, was the Hollywood adaptation of the Hong Kong 2002 original, Infernal Affairs, starring Tony and Andy. In the Hollywood version, Leonardo DiCaprio is Tony’s character and Matt Damon is Andy Lau’s. Infernal Affairs is considered the best crime saga in Hong Kong cinematic history. 

 

And now its two stars are back on screen together again in The Goldfinger, a film about corporate corruption. This is basically the equivalent of De Niro and Pacino in Heat. Another reason this movie is coming in with high expectations? It was directed and written by Felix Chong, who also cowrote Infernal Affairs. And the trailer looks amazing – Tony is giving big crime boss, Wolf of Wall Street energy here:

 

By the way, “goldfinger” is slang in Cantonese for traitor/rat/narc. 

 

The Goldfinger is expected to hit theatres this summer. 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey