Disney has found the star of their live-action Mulan remake. It’s Chinese actress Liu Yifei, who co-starred with Chow Yun-Fat in The Assassins. The company announced the news on Twitter today.
Liu Yifei Has Been Cast as #Mulan in the Upcoming Live-Action Film: https://t.co/rKn6minNV4 pic.twitter.com/hkmJW0AdMv
— Disney (@Disney) November 29, 2017
Disney has been very deep in the business of making live-action versions of its animated children’s classics for a long time now. Since 2014’s Maleficent, Disney has produced five such movies, but they have nearly 20 more in production, including Mulan, Aladdin and for some reason, Dumbo. No word on who will play the super racist crows in that one unless Disney digs up Al Jolson.
A lot of the movies Disney is remaking don’t even lend themselves to being live-action films, such as The Lion King. Sure, everyone loves that Beyoncé is going to play Nala, but there’s not a single human character in The Lion King, so it’s just computer animation on a live-action background. And the live action Winnie the Pooh adaptation, Christopher Robin, well… Pooh is a stuffed animal. So you’re making Ted for children.
But what about Liu Yifei herself? She’s an actress and model known to her fans as Fairy Sister because of her almost unearthly beauty. She’s also starred alongside the likes of Jackie Chan and Jet Li in action films like The Forbidden Kingdom. She also starred in a number of period dramas on Chinese television, such as The Return of the Condor Heroes. Oh, and while she was born in China, she grew up in the United States, so she speaks fluent English as well as Chinese.
Basically, even though Disney is probably mining the live action well way, way too deep, Mulan might be the best of the bunch, especially considering they’ve found one of the most beautiful and talented women in the world to play the titular Mulan.
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