“Sometimes great things take a bit of time,” Yen wrote on his Instagram. “[Sleeping Dogs] is [in] motion — you guys ready for this?”
Yen is best-known to American audiences for his role as Chirrut in Rogue One. He also recently appeared in xXx: Return of Xander Cage, alongside Vin Diesel.
Original Film, a company known for action films like The Fate of the Furious and R.I.P.D., is producing the film. The production company is also in charge of a Sonic the Hedgehog adaptation.
Yen’s Instagram message was accompanied by an image of Yen and the game’s protagonist, Wei Shen. This could mean that the film will be a direct adaptation of the game, rather than a movie set in the same universe. Developed by the now-defunct United Front Games, it starred Shen as an undercover cop infiltrating the seedy underground crime world of Hong Kong, and it even featured a voice performance from Oscar winner Emma Stone.
The game didn’t manage to attract a very large audience, leading to the sequel reportedly being canceled in 2013. A “Definitive Edition” was released on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in 2014, and it was free through Xbox Live’s Games With Gold program in December 2016.
A free-to-play online PC spinoff game called Triad Wars was also in the works and even ran a closed beta, but United Front shut it down in 2016.
Sleeping Dogs isn’t the only video game adaptation in the works. In addition to the Alicia Vikander-led Tomb Raider movie launching in March, Illumination and Nintendo are collaborating on a Super Mario Bros. animated film. Little else is known about the project, but it’s being distributed by Universal, which is also creating Nintendo-themed areas in its Universal Studios theme parks around the world.
