News from Cannes is that Emperor Motion Picture has picked up international sales rights for Jay Chou’s upcoming Taiwanese high school action film “Kung Fu Dunk”, formerly called “Slam Dunk”. (The name change was to keep the film from being confused with a comic book of the same name.) The special-effects laden film, budgeted to be the most expensive in Taiwanese history at $10 million or so, is currently shooting in Mainland China before moving back to Taiwan. Information about the film is hard to find, but I did find a couple of things…

This guy knows something:

[Kung Fu Dunk] incoporates Kung-Fu, sports, [and] is the process of how a hip-hop styled boy practices his “Bull Fight” on the basketball court.

Yeah, I really have no idea what that means, either.

But suffice it to say the film is apparently about a kid who loves basketball (Chou is an admitted basketball-holic) and ends up using kung fu on the court, sort of like the Stephen Chow action-comedy “Shaolin Soccer” except, well, with bigger balls. Er, basketballs.

According to this, the director, Zhu Yanping (who was the action choreographer on Chou’s last movie, the Zhang Yimou-directed “Curse of the Golden Flower”) had wanted Houston Rockets center Yao Ming to guest star in the movie, but being that I live in Houston and follow the Rockets 24-7, this seems to be a non-starter as I haven’t heard anything about it.

The film was supposed to co-star Asian pop singer BoA, but she’s since been replaced by Hong Kong wunderkind Charlene Choi, one-half of the ubiquitous “Twins” pop group.

“Kung Fu Dunk” is scheduled for a February 2008 release, around the Chinese New Year.

Star Jay Chou on the court:

Chou and co-star Charlene Choi: