Eastern Eye: Wu Jing

Wu Jing must be one happy man right now. After years of hard work, he has finally made a film that launches him into superstardom.

His latest film ‘Wolf Warrior II’, which he has directed and stars in, has become a record-breaking box office hit in his native China. It took just 4 hours to earn 100 million RMB (approximately 14 million US dollars) and went on to take in over 200 million RMB daily for 7 consecutive days, including 366 million RMB on July 30, the highest ever single-day gross at the Chinese box office. It is also the fastest to reach the 1 billion RMB milestone (doing so in just 85 hours), beating Stephen Chow’s ‘The Mermaid’ that took 92 hours to do so. After just 13 days of release, the film has taken the throne from ‘The Mermaid’ (which took 3.39 billion RMB in 2016) as the all-time number 1 film in China’s box office history.

‘Wolf Warrior II” is the sequel to Wu’s 2015 hit ‘Wolf Warrior’. The actor-director recalls that he had great difficulties getting the first film financed, as many war films flopped around that time. But his wife Xie Nan supported and encouraged him to get the film made. And the rest, as they say, is history. ‘Wolf Warrior’ opened at the top of the local box office and went on to gross a total of 600 million RMB (approximately US$89 million). That was Wu’s first taste of real box office success, after spending years acting in films that didn’t really allow him to shine and showcase his skills as a martial artist (with only very few exceptions like ‘SPL’ and the more recent ‘SPL: A Time of Consequences’).

Wu Jing was born in 1974 and has been practising martial arts since the age of 6. Like a number of Chinese action superstars before him (such as Jet Li), he was a Wushu champion before going into the film industry. It was legendary action choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping who discovered his talents and cast him in his first film ‘Tai Chi II’ (aka ‘Tai Chi Boxer’) in 1996. He then acted in many movies in Hong Kong as well as television series in mainland China. In 2008, he made his directorial debut with ‘Legendary Assassin’.

Interestingly, the Chinese title of ‘Legendary Assassin’ literally means ‘Wolf Tooth’, while the Chinese title of ‘Wolf Warrior’ is ‘Battle Wolf’, meaning all three films that Wu has directed so far have the word ‘Wolf’ in their Chinese titles. Also, the aforementioned ‘SPL’ stands for ‘Sha Po Lang’, and ‘Lang’ is the Chinese word for wolf. He is certainly not going to stop making ‘Wolf’ films yet, because ‘Wolf Warrior III’ has already been announced.

As a lover of Asian action films, I am really happy to see Wu Jing finally get the success that he so truly deserves. He has worked hard over the years and never given up despite all the difficulties, injuries, discouragement and lack of opportunities. He is an amazing martial artist and at the same time incredibly humble. I hope he reaches even greater heights with his upcoming films, and believe that the best is yet to come for Master Wu.