During the 2010 promotion of the new martial arts movie The Little Big Soldier, Jackie Chan talked about his motivation for making his 101th film named Armour of God 3 or Chinese Zodiac. According to Chan, he wanted to work on the movie that deals with recovering the national treasures of the Chinese people including the last four lost items of the Gardens of Perfect Clarity’s 12 Head Statues of Chinese Zodiac.

Film will be produced by Emperor Motion Pictures and Emperor Dragon Movies, budget of Indiana Jones-esque adventure series Armour of God 3 is about $40 million with Jackie co-directing along with Stanley Tong. Jackie is going back to directorial duties since Who Am I? movie in 1998. He came up with the story in 2003 but due to schedule conflicts, the development was put on hold until 2011.

What Jackie said about his third adventure movie: “I once saw a Chinese Zodiac animal bust being auctioned in a foreign country, I was immensely stirred, why do we keep losing our national treasures to other countries? Last year, two more busts were auctioned, re-igniting my will to shoot the movie Chinese Zodiac. Why does such and such museum have so many Chinese national treasures? These are loots. Many big countries are saying those are world legacies, and they’re safekeeping them, but in reality, they just want to possess them.”

He also added, “Once, I set aside US$30m, intending to quietly buy back an animal bust for China. However, the final bid was US$100m, it was far too high, beyond what I could afford, and I had to give up. I had thought of making use of my kung fu skills, sneak into those museums, and get back all those lost national treasures one by one. But, their security was too high. But I believe, all these artifacts will gradually be returned by and by.”

Jackie wanted all the bases covered in the movie by allotting another 70 million yuan for a major action scene. He said, “have been hesitant about this for a long time, many told me it is too extravagant, and advised me against it. But eventually, I still go for it. This film will contain many vigorous action scenes, I’d almost be fighting throughout the film, but my most demanding action scenes will stop at martial arts movie.”

You know, I’d love to see Sammo Hung doing something to the project as he is the best fightig choreography for today (great job on Ip Man 2 Film) and Jackie has to work with him again for sure. First 2 martial arts movies of Jackie’s adventure is a pure gold! Bad news that on press in Oslo Chan said Armour of God 3 will be his last big action film. It’s not all bad news though, Chan will continue to star and appear in films but showing off his acting ability as opposed to his muscle.

IMDB has Chan at 109 acting credits, 18 as director 37 as producer, including a few uncredited appearances and his voice gig for Kung Fu Panda 2. All newspapers tells that actually 1911 will be billed as Chan’s 100th project, which Chan co-directed with Red Cliff cinematographer Zhang Li. Anyway who cares, Jackie is Jackie and he always welcome to any TV or cinema screen. If you haven’t seen his last project with him I reckon to read my review on Shaolin Movie.

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