Russell Crowe Confirmed For RZA's THE MAN WITH THE IRON FIST

With word now out that RZA is in active production on his Eli Roth produced directorial and starring debut The Man With The Iron Fist the first bits of firm casting news have arrived via an article at Film Business Asia.

Among the Asian cast members are Lucy Liu, Daniel Wu and Byron Mann with that report confirming that Russell Crowe has indeed been cast and is expected to arrive on set at the end of January and remain on the shoot through until the end of February.

It's an interesting albeit risky bit of casting. On the interesting side if Crowe can recapture some of the energy that made him so compelling in LA Confidential or even his gunslinger role in Sam Raimi's The Quick And The Dead then we've got something that could be very fun on screen. On the risk side, however, how many fifteen year old kids in a mall in middle America can you picture saying "Hey, let's go see that new Russell Crowe kung fu film?" The two just don't seem to mesh in a sellable way and you don't make your money back on a film of this scale without those kids. Throw in the fact that even the films that Crowe makes apparent sense in are tanking badly these days - only two of Crowe's past ten features have made their money back at the US box office (American Gangster, 3:10 To Yuma) with most failing badly - and it does not bode particularly well for box office results.