2009: Year of the Chick Fight! First Proper Trailer For Xiong Xin Xin's COWEB!

Thailand's Chocolate and Denmark's Fighter opened the flood gates for a female-fronted martial arts revival in 2008 and the gates show no sign of closing any time soon. Coming in 2009 are Japan's High Kick Girl and Hong Kong's Coweb, the common thread between the films being that all feature first time actresses who are real life fighters and do all of their own fight and stunt work.

Coweb marks the directorial debut of Xiong Xin Xin, a familiar name to martial arts fans around the globe thanks to his acting role as Clubfoot in the Once Upon A Time In China films. Xiong has been absent from the screen for a while now but that's only because he's been busy working as a fight choreographer and now as a director. The star? Jiang Luxia, who was spotted on the Hong Kong martial art reality show The Disciple, a show sponsored by Jackie Chan to find the next generation of Hong Kong screen fighters - a successful move as a number of finalist are appearing in upcoming films. Here's a synopsis:

Newcomer 蒋露霞 Jiang Luxia, a finalist of The Disciple reality TV show, plays the lead role as Guangdong wushu coach Nie Yi Yi who gets implicated by a kidnap case in Hong Kong. It's up to her to battle waves after waves of fighters to rescue her employer and his wife who are kidnapped. Little did she know that her fights are being captured on video and broadcast live via a website which serves as an illegal online gambling den...

When we first wrote about this back in September there was a trailer and a pair of clips available on the official website. Those have disappeared now but a new trailer has just surfaced which you can find below the break. The video quality is lower than I'd like but the fight quality is nice and high.