Jackie Chan’s Kung Fu Yoga gets shooting nod from govt

International superstar Jackie Chan is set to shoot in India as the Narendra Modi government has given its go-ahead for the shooting of the movie Kung Fu Yoga. The India-China co-production, which also stars Hindi movie actor Sonu Sood, was cleared by the government for shooting in the country.

The multi-lingual action-adventure film is understood to have completed several rounds of international shooting, including in China and Dubai. The film is directed by Stanley Tong, who also directed Rumble in the Bronx, and is scheduled to be released later this year. Also starring Indian actresses Amyra Dastur and Disha Patani, the film features Jackie Chan as a professor of archaeology who teams up with an Indian professor to locate India’s lost Magadha treasure in Tibet.

The film was announced by Chinese film regulators — as part of an India-China co-production agreement — during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China last year. In all, three films were commissioned under a filmmaking agreement between China and India, signed during President Xi Jinping’s 2014 India visit.

Meanwhile, another India-China co-production, based on Xuan Zang, a noted Buddhist monk during the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) who made an arduous journey to India to study Buddhism, has also been cleared for shooting in the country.

Sources stated that co-production of films is expected to help Indian films gain access to China by circumventing a quota system for imported films. It is also expected to help Chinese films reach the Indian film market, which is the biggest in the world in terms of number of films produced. It is understood that Indian films have also gained popularity in China in recent years. It is learnt that the Narendra Modi government has adopted a policy of single-window clearance for granting permission of shooting to foreign films on a priority basis.