EXCLUSIVE: While all the buzz this week about Matt Damon focused on Deadline’s reveal that he’ll reteam with Paul Greengrass in their third Bourne Identity film, there’s another very exotic international film that Damon is also flirting with. That is the lead role in The Great Wall, the Legendary Pictures film the great Chinese helmer Zhang Yimou signed on to direct. Legendary Pictures principal Thomas Tull has been trying to mount the China-set epic for several years now. Script is by Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro, but the most recent draft is by Tony Gilroy, who is familiar to Damon in that he scripted those terrific Bourne Identity films. The Great Wall was going to shoot last year and give Legendary a foothold into the China market, with Ed Zwick helming. While Zwick went as far as casting Henry Cavill and Benjamin Walker, it just didn’t get over the wall that time.
Damon, who next stars for Ridley Scott in The Martian, has scheduling complications that make this whole thing daunting. He is a big fan of the director though, and nearly worked with him on the film Flowers Of War, the picture that Christian Bale starred in. So everybody is trying.
The Great Wall reveals the mystery behind why the Great Wall was built, and the secrets hidden beneath its stones. The film will be produced by Thomas Tull, Chuck Roven, Jon Jashni, Richard Suckle and Peter Loehr. Jillian Share, Bennett and Alex Gartner will executive produce. Damon is repped by WME. Yimou by CAA.
Oh good lord, another Thomas Tull picture about giant monsters? This guy needs to get over his Freudian obsession with size already. Go see a therapist instead of foisting it upon the moviegoing public year after year.
I think we can officially say that Damon now feels his family is settled happily in L A. He’s back to work in a big way. Lonergan, Scott, Greengrass, and now this. It’s hard to decide which project intrigues me more. All this AND Jason freaking Bourne. Excellent.
james schemes called it: movies are being made in 2015 for chinese teenagers.
I’m disappointed that they would give Henrys role to someone else but if I had a choice of seeing Henry Cavill in China Wall or getting to see him play the role of 007, I would definitely want to see him as 007 a million times more!!
The mystery of the Great Wall of China? Newsflash: it ain’t a mystery. This sounds like a stupid movie already.
Zhang Yimou has been incompetently copying Western blockbuster-style filmmaking for years now, and he still sucks at it. Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Curse of the Golden Flower, and The Flowers of War were all crap.
Agreed except for House of Flying Daggers, that was actually good.
There are many ways to look at a movie from different perspective. And
I think all his movies are GREAT!
His early stuff with Li Gong was good, especially Raise the Red Lantern
Wasn’t the wall built by slaves? How can you make that into a motion picture without romanticizing it?