Peking Opera adapted into 3-D thriller

Half a century after its debut, the revolutionary Peking Opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy is staging a contemporary comeback - as a 3-D film epic.

Questions swirled around distributor Bona Film Group's announcement two years ago that the film would be directed by Hong Kong martial arts filmmaker Tsui Hark - a Vietnam native educated in the United States, who didn't seem to have a cultural connection to the production.

The reason was explained at a news conference on Tuesday. Hark has been obsessed with the story since he saw a 1960 film adaptation in New York City's Chinatown in the '70s.