Chinese star Gong Li has quite a large slate of films coming up including 2046, Eros and Memoirs of a Geisha and she isn’t stopping there as she has recently been cast in two large Hollywood flicks.
First up she has been cast in Michael Mann‘s feature film adaptation of the hit TV show Miami Vice, which will feature Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx cast in the familiar roles of Crockett and Tubbs. Li’s part in the film finds her as a crime figure of Chinese and Cuban descent.
Secondly she has been cast in Peter Webber’s Behind the Mask, the prequel story delving into the origins of Hannibal Lecter, the man eating doctor made famous by Anthony Hopkins in the Oscar-winning film The Silence of the Lambs.
This casting news is a bit surprising considering a Lecter hasn’t even been cast yet, but Dino and Martha De Laurentiis told Variety that Webber was looking for an exotic new face to tell the story of how Hannibal the Cannibal developed his sense of culture as well as a taste for human flesh.
After the young Hannibal escapes from an orphanage and runs away to Paris, he takes refuge at the home of his uncle. His wife, Lady Murasaki, becomes the sociopath’s teacher.
As for my earlier statement about the casting of Lecter, they are currently searching for young men to play the part of Lecter at ages 8, 14 and 20 and De Laurentiis is also shopping for a distributor now that Universal Pictures has passed on the feature, which goes into production in September in Prague.
