While Ng Khoon-chuan knew that when audiences decide to boycott a particular actor it could cause all sorts of trouble for the productions they appear in Marcus Maye Jersey , the producer of new sci-fi film Impossible never expected that it would cost him millions of yuan and cause numerous subsequent problems, when one of his actors got involved in an online controversy.
Trouble started in early 2014 when Hong Kong actor Chapman To, who had been cast as Impossible's villain, outraged audiences in the Chinese mainland with his political views and online posts disparaging mainland audiences.
Since then, many filmmakers and audiences have refused to work with or watch any production starring To. Even the film Aberdeen, in which To only had a cameo appearance Leonard Williams Jersey , failed dramatically at the mainland box office in May, 2014.
Cases such as this have not been rare this past year. Actor Wang Xuebing's arrest for drug use forced the Golden Horse Award-winning film A Fool to change its mainland release date so it could reshoot portions of the film containing the actor.
Without a doubt the trouble To stirred up was bad news for the team behind Impossible, since at the time the film was already in post-production.
Keeping the actor's scenes meant taking a commercial hit or even losing out on the chance to be shown in theaters at all, but cutting them meant a majority of the film would have to be reshot. After the film's release date got pushed back more than a year, investors considered pulling out, leaving Ng between a rock and a hard place.
Yet necessity is the mother of invention. Rising pressure spurred the team to find creative solutions. Turning to technology Darron Lee Jersey , they came up with approaches that are rarely ever seen in Chinese film.
Not so irreplaceable
Impossible has been in theaters since December 4. Now featuring comedic actor Dapeng as the big bad, you would probably never guess by watching the film that Dapeng never actually interacted with the other actors during filming.
Ng decided to take a chance after a conversation with visual effects designer Adrian Chan, an industry veteran who has worked on a number of Hollywood blockbusters as well as Jackie Chan's upcoming film Sliptrace. The designer explained to Ng how he had replaced stuntmen with stars in film Monk Comes Down the Mountain.
Through the use of rotoscoping techniques, 3D scanning and green-screen, Dapeng was inserted