John Woo wages The Battle Of Red Cliff

Looks like John Woo really wasn’t kidding when he said he was upping sticks from the cruel shores of Hollywood and heading to China to make an epic period costume drama.

And slipping on those costumes is a hefty cast that includes Chow Yun Fat, Ken Watanabe, and Tony Leung, who will be reporting to the set next March. Based on the classic Chinese novel Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, Woo’s new film The Battle Of Red Cliff is set in the dying days of the Han Dynasty (in the year 208, history buffs!) and sees the Three Kingdoms’ difficult birth in a brutal war.

With historians estimating that more than a million soldiers took part in the Red Cliff scrap, Woo’s not doing things by half. He’s planning to shoot with six units simultaneously to capture scenes. We’d suggest any other films planning to shoot in China at the same time find their cameras elsewhere…

All being well, Red Cliff should invade our screens in 2008.