“Legend of the White Dragon” Poster
Losing your lead actor before filming has wrapped on a production is never easy, and not taking into consideration the emotional toll, the approaches taken to finishing a production that’s lost its lead over the years have ranged from questionable to admirable. When Bruce Lee died during the filming of Game of Death, Golden Harvest dusted off the footage 5 years later and attempted to complete it with lookalikes (and most famously, a cardboard cutout of his face). When Alexander Fu Sheng passed away during the filming of Eight Diagram Pole Fighter director Lau Kar-Leung rejigged the plot to have it focused on a different character. When Brandon Lee suffered a fatal onset accident while filming The Crow, technology had reached a point where his face could be digitally imposed on stand-ins.
In 2022 the father and son director team of Sean Schoenke and Aaron Schoenke would face the same issue during the filming of Legend of the White Dragon, when the lead actor David Jason Frank (The Dragon Warrior), for which the production was a passion project, tragically took his own life. While principal photography had completed during the Covid era, the restrictions that were in place had consumed a chunk of the budget, which meant there were still several scenes involving Frank that had yet to be filmed. In this case the decision was made to maintain Frank’s position as the lead, befitting of how meaningful the production was to him, and Continue reading
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