Simu Liu’s Sleeping Dogs movie is apparently much further along than we thought. Sleeping Dogs is a cult-classic video game that came in the wave of open world crime games following the major success of Grand Theft Auto. Those kinds of games have largely slowed down in recent years, likely because they extremely expensive to make and take years to materialize. Mafia, Saints Row, and Watch Dogs were some of the other franchises to take a crack at it, but Sleeping Dogs was arguably one of the best open-world crime games and offered a really unique angle into the genre.
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It originally started a True Crime game, yet another GTA “clone” that was owned by Activision. The game eventually got scrapped and Square Enix took over and renamed it Sleeping Dogs. It was immediately praised for its great gameplay, engaging story, and compelling characters, but it didn’t sell as well as as Square Enix had hoped. At that time, the publisher had high expectations for many of its games and claimed many of them didn’t hit those expectations, including Tomb Raider (2013) which sold almost 4 million copies in about a month. A sequel to Sleeping Dogs was going to happen, but it was canceled and the developer United Front Games unfortunately shut down.
The IP has laid dormant for many years now, but there was an attempt to make a Sleeping Dogs movie with Donnie Yen. The film lingered in development hell for years and Yen even invested his own money to try to further it down the line, but it never entered full production or saw the light of day. The project eventually fizzled out and now, actor Simu Liu claims he’s trying to make a new Sleeping Dogs movie and is looking to get a deal made with the rights holders. The actor took to social media this week and talked about his love for the game, noting how he has a great deal of affinity for it and even has a wish list for some of the cast.
Sleeping Dogs Movie Starring Simu Liu Is in Active Development
It seemed like this just meant that Liu was in the very early stages of trying to get the movie off the ground, but that isn’t completely true. According to IGN, Simu Liu’s Sleeping Dogs movie is a go and is in full development. Liu is attached to play Wei Shen, the main protagonist of Sleeping Dogs who is an undercover cop tasked with infiltrating a triad organization. A writer and major filmmaker are attached to help bring it to life, but the report doesn’t name anyone specific. On top of that, Sleeping Dogs is being produced by Story Kitchen, a company that has done a lot of work on various video game adaptations including the It Takes Two movie, Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, and more.
As of right now, there’s no release date for Sleeping Dogs or even any kind of window for production. It’s likely going to take some time to get cameras rolling, but it’s good to hear it’s not just a pipe dream. There’s hope among fans that a Sleeping Dogs movie could lead to a sequel to the game if the film is successful. Of course, a lot of things have to happen for that to come to fruition, but it’s certainly the best chance at a sequel in years. As of right now, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
Simu Liu is a great fit for Wei Shen and given we have no idea when Shang-Chi 2 is going to happen, it’s good that Liu is finding yet another action franchise for himself. The actor has largely been in comedies like Barbie and non leading roles since his MCU debut. It seems likely he will probably be in the upcoming Avengers movies too, but that has yet to be confirmed.
