EXCLUSIVE: In a sizzling package deal for EFM consumers this weekend, Jean-Claude Van Damme will star in What’s My Title? Directed by Jeremy Zag, the movie will likely be produced by Cross Creek’s Tyler Thompson alongside Asko Akopyan, Zag and Van Damme. Govt Producer is John Soibatian. Cross Creek is totally financing a movie that can reunite the preventing icon in matches towards a few of his previous display screen rivals.
Van Damme tells Deadline that What’s My Title? will dip into his cinematic and private life — as did the 2008 movie JCVD — and that it’s going to convey to an finish his lengthy profession as an action movie fighter. Oscar-winning Inexperienced Ebook scribe Nick Vallelonga and Paul Sloan (Stilleto) wrote the script, based mostly on a narrative by Van Damme. Wild Bunch Worldwide is dealing with overseas gross sales, and CAA Media Finance is representing the movie’s home distribution rights.
Within the movie, Van Damme will play himself. Left in a coma following a severe automotive accident, he wakes up with amnesia, unrecognizable to everybody, together with himself. By means of a collection of fights towards iconic fighters from throughout his legendary profession, Van Damme begins a quest for his personal identification and life that means. This leads him to 1 closing match.
Zag produced the animated collection Miraculous: Tales of Woman Bug and Cat Noir.
“I wished to depart the stage however with a revisit of my profession, beginning with Bloodsport, the one the place I began to turn into well-known,” Van Damme informed Deadline.
“I need this to be a brand new Bloodsport however on a better degree. Within the movie, I’m on my manner down when it comes to profession, and as I come out of a premiere of one other action movie, I’m not glad as a result of I’ve been dwelling in accommodations the previous 30 years, which is definitely true. We’re going to convey actual parts from my actual life and what occurred to me.
I got here from Belgium, all the best way to Hollywood. I succeeded, I failed, I got here again. So I’m strolling out on the road after the premiere, and increase! — a automotive hits me as a result of I’m drunk. Once I get up from the impression, I don’t know what’s my title, and nobody acknowledges me.”
Stated Zag: “He’s trapped on this catch-22 the place his coronary heart is his solely information and that street will lead him by a journey that features plenty of fights, in what will likely be an actual action mainstream movie the place we deal with JC as an actual human superhero.”
What’s enjoyable is that for Van Damme the character to regain his mojo, he’ll struggle plenty of the on-screen opponents that made him a star for his acrobatic, high-flying fashion. That doubtless embody will Common Soldier‘s Dolph Lundgren, Kickboxer‘s Tong Po (Michel Qissi) and Double Impression‘s Bolo Yeung (who co-starred alongside Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and stays in positive form).
Zag mentioned that they are going to shoot this in Paris, in surprising areas just like the catacombs beneath the Opera of Paris, the place he’ll sq. off towards the nemeses of his lengthy display screen profession. “I grew up watching JC and wish new audiences to do the identical factor, and when he stands towards Tong Po, he’ll start to flashback in his thoughts, and we are going to reproduce a number of the finest fights from a few of his greatest movies.”
Van Damme — who at 61 can nonetheless try this unbelievable break up he confirmed off with a foot on two totally different shifting Volvo vans — mentioned he’s getting ready to place within the obligatory laborious coaching in a number of international locations to get himself prepared for his final hurrah. “We’re getting the entire iconic individuals I fought and have most of them come again,” he mentioned. “The entire UFC fighters grew up watching my movies, and we could have a few of these nice champions as fighters, and a few as managers like Randy Couture. We’ll have a terrific combine and the fights could have an actual really feel to them.”
As for what he’ll do after throwing that final spinning hook kick, Van Damme has deliberate it out.
“I’m canceling all the pieces to get in form, and after this movie, I’ve purchased a small boat,” he mentioned. “Not a giant boat — that’s not for me — however I wish to go world wide, and calm down. I work all my life, I reside all my life in accommodations for 30 years. That each one will likely be defined within the movie, how I grew to become distant from my household. After this, I wish to calm down and luxuriate in my life and household, as a result of life goes by quick.”
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