John Woo aims high with ‘Flying Tigers’

Action filmmaker John Woo and China Film Group are collaborating on a war movie about the famous “Flying Tigers,” a group of volunteer airmen who fended off Japanese aerial assaults on Chinese territory in the early days of World War II with their distinct, shark face-painted Curtiss P-40 fighter planes.

The film, which is now in early script development, was announced by Woo’s partner and producer Terence Chang in a press conference in Beijing on July 6th.

In their coverage, The Hollywood Reporter states that the film is about “Gen. Claire Lee Chennault training a ragtag group of Chinese Nationalists to fly against the Japanese invaders in southwest China and what was then called Burma.”

Either THR or the producers got their history wrong because Chennault’s Flying Tigers were made up of essentially American mercenaries, former U.S. military ace pilots such as Gregory “Pappy” Boyington who were later absorbed back into the U.S. military as the war in the Pacific intensified. Chennault’s connection with the Kuomintang was as a military aviation advisor to Chiang Kai-shek at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. It was Chiang who authorized the American Volunteer Group that comprised the Flying Tigers.

Chang stated that there had been numerous attempts to get a “Flying Tigers” movie made but this had been hindered by the communist Chinese government’s unwillingness to support such a project. This would be understandable given the AVG’s association with the communist’s political and former military rivals.

“Now things have changed for the better, I think,” said Chang.

I don’t want to pre-judge but I suspect what has changed is the pitch. Hopefully, we won’t be subjected to revisionist history but then the subject was already given the fact-bending, propagandist Hollywood treatment in David Miller’s FLYING TIGERS (1942), starring John Wayne.

This will be Woo’s fourth war project after directing the Vietnam War film BULLET IN THE HEAD, the two-part RED CLIFF saga and the Hollywood production WINDTALKERS. (Thanks to a commenter below for a reminder about BULLET IN THE HEAD).

There was no mention of Woo’s forthcoming kung fu movie with star Michelle Yeoh or suggestion of which film will come first, although if this WWII project is only in the early scripting phase I suspect it will come after.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Tags: John Woo, upcoming