Donnie Yen Confirms His Involvement In Sleeping Dogs Movie

Here’s the thing about video games – make it great enough, and it might live again in some form of another.

In 2012, game developer United Front Games, made an awesome action RPG which centered around Hong Kong and her secret societies. Considering that most video games that we’ve come to play all these years were influenced by the West, Sleeping Dogs came to us like a breath of fresh air. It also helped that most of the cast were Asians, including Lucy Liu, Edison Chen, Kelly Hu, along with then rising star, Emma Stone.

But alas, despite the renown and critical praise of the game, United Front Games shuttered in 2016, and the game, which was an unofficial sequel to True Crime, was no more.

However, Hong Kong action superstar Donnie Yen recently announced his involvement in a Sleeping Dogs movie.

Details are extremely sketchy at this point in time. Even Donnie’s social media posting has his older movies mixed in with stills from the Sleeping Dogs video game. To be fair, it was reported last year that he would lead a movie based on the game, but there was never any official confirmation by a studio, or by the action star.

Considering Donnie’s pedigree, Sleeping Dogs is certainly a setting that he would be at home with. The game featured Hong Kong triads (what else), an undercover cop plotline, combined with fluid combat, martial art combos, skull-busting environmental finishes, this is a movie adaptation made for Donnie. Familiar tropes yet still great fodder for a movie. Thankfully, we’re not getting a Hollywood version of Sleeping Dogs ala The Departed.

Given the initial fanfare at the moment, there’s a good chance it might rekindle interest in Sleeping Dogs again. It’s not unheard of for crowdfunded games that have plenty of community support to be given a new lease of life, so let’s hope the development team is taking notes and seizing this opportunity.

Gerald

Gerald currently straddles between his love of video games and board gaming. There’s nothing that interests him more than trying out the newest and fanciest gadget in town as well. He dreams of publishing a board game sometime in the future!