Sports/Olympics / Newsmaker

American director digs Yao Ming
By Yu Nan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-05-15 15:08

Brett Ratner,director of the American movie Rush Hour, has recently expressed his wish to invite NBA star Yao Ming to play in the latest edition of the series.

Ratner says he is extremely interested in the Houston Rockets center, a local media reported. 

"I'll tell you who I'm going after," he said with a burst of excitement. "I want Yao Ming, the basketball player, to be in it."

The director says he wants to re-create a scene from the film "Game of Death" starring NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

"I want to recreate the fight sequence from the Bruce Lee movie where he fights Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but I want to do the reverse; I want Chris Tucker to fight Yao Ming. I want that to happen," Ratner said.


"I also would love Gong Li,a famous film star both in China and World,last seen in Memoirs of a Geisha, to be in the movie,"he said.

But the most biggest problem that faced Ratner would be how he was able to get Yao Ming and other famous film stars.

Yao Ming made his debut on the big screen last year in "The Year of Yao", a documentary chronicling the NBA's all-star player's rookie season, but it did't draw a large audience in America.

"These guys have great chemistry and they love each other," Ratner replied when asked whether he thinks the dynamics between the stars might be the same after almost five years, before joking, "They both don't speak a word of English though."