Birth of the Dragon

There are bad weekends, there are bad weekends, and then there are historically terrible weekends the likes of which haven’t been seen in decades. Guess which one applies to this past weekend? With the overall box office dipping more than $30 million from last week, and the overall numbers landing as historically bad, we seem to be ending August on a terrible note. Nevertheless, here are the box office numbers through Sunday afternoon:

Think you know Bruce Lee’s martial-arts masterpiece? Test your knowledge with the latest installment of You Think You Know Movies!

A Bruce Lee biopic sounds like a dicey proposition. How could watching someone pretend to be the greatest fighter of all time (by all means, @ me) accomplish anything other than making the audience wish for the genuine article? But judging from the newly released trailer, Birth of the Dragon has a fair amount going for it. For one, it has the good sense to focus on a single period of Lee’s life, narrowing the film to his early years in San Francisco, when he was building his legendary reputation. It’s got George Nolfi for a director, whose previous effort The Adjustment Bureau was at the very least interesting. And in the lead role, it’s got Phillip Ng, an inveterate kicker of ass who can also pull off Lee’s signature bowl-cut.

The film is expected to blend the traditional elements of the biopic with the balletic thrills of wuxia cinema, examining Lee’s life and times while simultaneously acting as a white-knuckle action picture in its own right. Philip Ng has agreed to portray Lee himself, and Yu Xia, Billy Magnussen, Jinging Qu, and Jin Xing will appear in the supporting cast.

Many great men get multiple biographical pictures about them. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, has been the source of many films, from this year's 'Lincoln' to John Ford's 'Young Abraham Lincoln' to 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure' (though historians haven't confirmed if those events are true). Kung fu legend Bruce Lee is about to get his second bio-pic.