Clint Eastwood’s interest in Asian tragedy isn’t ending with the Japanese defeat at Iwo Jima. He may be following up Letters with a movie based on the book The Rape of Nanking.
MonkeyPeaches reports that Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Michelle Yeoh, and Zhang Ziyi are all in talks to sign on to the film, a $40 million joint venture between United States based Viridian Entertainment and China’s Jiangsu Cultural Industry Group. They’re constructing a massive set to make it, reportedly 7 and a half football fields in size. It’ll house replicas of parts of the city of Nanking, circa 1930s.
The book is about the fall of the Chinese capital of Nanking to the invading Japanese in 1937. The taking of the capital began a several weeks long massacre in which the Japanese killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners. If you’ve ever wondered what it is the Chinese have against Japan, this is it. The Japanese committed atrocity after atrocity, killing, raping, looting, and burning for weeks on end.
The book is non-fiction, and intended to present a popular history of the tragedy. Since this is a movie with American’s in it, for the film they’ll turn it into the story of foreign nationals trying to protect innocent kids from the violence. I’m not sure I like that. It’s kind of like making a television show about the Holocaust, but having it star a charming, rogue American soldier who plays comedic pranks on the commander of the death camp where he’s imprisoned. I wonder if Clint Eastwood will dig tunnels under the Japanese camps?
The film adaptation of the novel has been written by William J. McDonald and Simon West is already set to direct. So if Clint does it, he’ll only be in it to act. He hasn’t done that since 1993’s In the Line of Fire.
