Bruce Lee's family has his image pretty much locked up from his first onscreen appearance as Kato in The Green Hornet forward, so anyone attempting to make a movie about Lee needs to go back in time a bit to before those days. That explains why over the years there has always been a lot of interest in making a movie about Bruce Lee's teacher, Yip Man. Not only do you get to capitalize on the Bruce Lee connection without having to jump through approval hoops from his estate, but he was also an interesting guy in his own right, being one of the first people to openly teach Wing Chun.

A few years ago, around 2002, Wong Kar-wai announced that he and Tony Leung Chiu-wai would be doing a Yip Man movie and Tony Leung, while doing publicity for 2046 in 2006, talked about training for the film. Shooting never started, but then this year Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen teamed up to make a Yip Man movie, produced by Raymond Wong, starring Simon Yam and Xing Yu and with action by Sammo Hung.

Stills from the film look interesting, if nothing else, and Wilson Yip revealed the plot at a press conference, saying:

"Yip Man came from an affluent family and was deeply engrossed in the studies and research of martial arts. At this time, his family undergoes severe changes, losing all its wealth. He has no choice but to take part in resistance activities, stirring up the folks to rise up against invasion. How would he and his friends and families go through trials in life, all these are in the movie."

(Actually, Yip Man did refuse to teach Wing Chun to Japanese troops, but he basically hung out in a remote village during the war, returning to Foshan afterwards, but whatever. It's a movie.)

Problem is, Raymond Wong has used the same title for this Yip Man movie that Wong Kar-wai announced he wanted to use: GRANDMASTER YIP MAN (一代宗師葉問). And war has broken out.

(Be aware that this story is coming from the Hong Kong papers which have a tendency to inflate even the most minor incidents into earth-shattering disasters.)

After Raymond Wong announced his title, Jet Tone, Wong Kar-wai's production company, issued a statement saying that they have exclusive rights to the Chinese title of the film and that it is "shameful" that Raymond Wong is using it. Also, they denied Donnie Yen's claim that 10 years previously Wong Kar-wai and Jeff Lau asked him to play Yip Man in a movie.

Next up, Yip Chun, Yip Man's son, went on the record about the movie, and one of his students went on the record trashing Tony Leung and Wong Kar-wai. Yip Chun was pretty mild-mannered about things, saying that he'd never met Tony Leung except for 5 minutes and so he'd never helped train him. He also said that Tony is a good actor but that Donnie Yen trained super hard for the role. His student then said that Wong Kar-wai was going to delay his Yip Man movie forever (until 2046, at least) and that Tony Leung didn't deserve to play Yip Man because he didn't know kung fu.

Then someone from the Movie Producers and Distributors Association of Hong Kong Ltd got involved and said that Wong Kar-wai had no exclusive rights to the title of the project, and pointed out that the DAYS OF BEING WILD title was used in previous films before WKW used it, anyways. Jet Tone issued another statement explaining that their use of DAYS OF BEING WILD was a tribute to the earlier movies, not a theft. They also pointed out that Raymond Wong was a major member of Movie Producers and Distributors Association of Hong Kong Ltd and that therefore any statement from that group was probably biased. It concluded by saying that WKW hadn't made his Yip Man movie yet because he was still researching it.

Wong Kar-wai himself subsequently went on the record saying that the media and pretty much everyone knew about the Chinese title for his Yip Man movie and so why would Raymond Wong use the same title? (The two men have a bit of a history - Raymond Wong fired WKW early in WKWs career.) WKW then said that it was a moral matter, rather than a legal matter, and that maybe Mandarin Films (Raymond Wong's company) should take a lesson from Yip Man's high moral standards. Finally, Ng See-yuen chimed in, saying that Jet Tone only has the exclusive rights to use the Chinese title in Taiwan.

But at least the sets look great!

(More info and stills about the GRANDMASTER YIP MAN movie)