MID-DAY (May 9, 2017)

Shekhar Kapur will co-write and direct Little Dragon, a feature film, about Bruce Lee’s early days, according to news agency reports. The film is backed by Chinese investors and will explore the formative years and adventures of the martial arts legend in 1950s Hong Kong.

Veteran Hollywood casting director Mary Vernieu is currently leading a worldwide search for the actor to play to play Lee’s younger version. The film will be co-scripted and produced by Lee’s daughter, Shannon, who runs Bruce Lee Entertainment, a division of the Bruce Lee Family Company, which is dedicated to promoting and protecting Lee’s legacy and ideas.

“The film will be a contemporary take on Bruce Lee who, aside from being considered the most gifted and famous martial artiste of all time, is now accepted as a major philosopher in his own right,” said Kapur in a statement. “It is important that the audience today relates their own lives to the journey of Bruce Lee, who manages to tap into his inner wisdom and harnesses his true destiny before it’s too late,” he added.

The film will follow a young Lee as he contends with “his family’s disappointment, young love, true friendship, betrayal, racism, deep hardship and the inner fire that threatens to unravel his destiny,” the producers said.

Little Dragon is being planned as an official US-China co-production. “I always thought that a film on how my father’s life was shaped in his early years in Hong Kong would be a worthwhile story to share so we could better understand him as a human being and a warrior,” Shannon said in a statement.

Currently in pre-production, the project will go on floors later this summer in two countries — China and Malaysia.