“Panda Plan” Theatrical Poster
Martial arts superstar Jackie Chan (Hidden Strike, Ride On) is headed to the zoo with Panda Plan (aka Project P), Mandarin Motion Pictures’ upcoming film directed by Zhang Luan (Song of Youth, Give Me Five).
The film centers on a rare baby panda with a dark circle around just one eye, who becomes a worldwide sensation when he’s born at China’s Noah Zoo. But when a Middle Eastern tycoon dispatches international mercenaries to kidnap the zoo’s baby pandas, Chan, playing a version of himself as an international action star, is forced to get involved in a rescue mission (via THR).
Panda Plan also stars Shi Ce (Hi, Mom), Wei Xiang (Full River Red), Han Yanbo (The Super Family) and of course, Huhu.
The film has gone through many pre-production reincarnations where it was also known as The Panda Agent or Mr. Panda, and at one point, Jackie Chan’s frequent director, Stanley Tong (Vanguard, Kung Fu Yoga, Police Story 3), was attached to the film (along with its previous Teaser Poster, you can read about it here).
Panda Plan hits domestically on October 1, 2024, followed by a U.S. release on October 18, 2024, from Well Go USA. Watch the film’s Newest Trailer below:
Just like most people will say, this looks awful. I don’t care if it’s for kids, this is just a cynical, brainless waste of time that’s meant to be forgotten about after a few weeks. No wonder Jackie Chan is portraying someone with Alzheimer’s in his next film.
The new trailer is excellent. Seems like it has the potential to be a modern Jackie classic. Believe me, Jackie has had very few classics in the last two decades.
If you’re talking strictly from a comedy perspective, then yeah, that’s very possible. But it can’t be “classic Jackie” flick without a memorable fight scene.
Edit: Okay, Newer trailer looks better (at least we know there is some action in it!)
It does seem like they’re emphasizing on the more tolerable parts and trying to fool people into thinking this will be cool.
Maybe lots of people like this style of comedic action, but it doesn’t speak to me.
After the awesome horse’s fart joke in Ride on, Jackie is proud to present his latest amazing achievement: a fart joke INCLUDED IN THE TRAILER for his next thing.
Wait, theye were at least two fart “jokes” in The Knight of shadows: Between Yin and Yang (I stopped watching that masterpiece at the second one).
Dear Jackie, produce small martial arts movies and stop ruining your legacy by your own choice. Or go fuck yourself.
Im not a fan of his recent stuff but lets be honest, his age is catching up & realistically he cant make those kind of movies anymore. Take it easy on him. The legend has gave us so much. If he wants to do these movies, good or bad, let him. Be it for financial reasons or just trying to stay active, let him. U dont have to watch these, its probably not aimed at u. But damn, be more respectful. Hes earned it…
Said by a guy who must have pathetic cardio
You, go fuck yourself
On the plus side this isn’t directed by Stanley Tong.
On the minus side….everything else
I was really looking forward to this after the excellent trailers. Now, I’m suspicious of this films quality because it is being released in the U.S. by Well Go USA. I don’t know how popular of an opinion this is but I personally don’t think that Well Go has ever released a good Jackie movie… Ever. I did really like some scenes in 1911 but overall that film is bad. Don’t even get me started on their other Jackie acquisitions. They are terrible. I fimly believe that Well Go USA is only able to get their hands on Jackie’s films that, for good reason, no other US distributor wants. Nowadays, if you want a worthwhile Jackie flick, they are released by Lionsgate or Universal and they are batting at a 50 percent success rate with their releases.
I hope that Well Go USA can prove me wrong with Panda Plan but this doesn’t bode well for the movie’s quality. I strongly believe that the reason that Well Go USA hasn’t been able to get their hands on A Legend (2024) is due to the fact that the last 25 minutes of that movie is excellent. If it had been a bad movie from beginning to end, Well Go USA would have been able to easily snatch it up.
I really liked Little Big Soldier, which was a Well Go USA release of a Jackie Chan film. I’ve heard some good things about Police Story: Lockdown, as well.
In hindsight Police Story 2013 is a bit of a minor classic not for being a Police story movie but for allowing the character of a mainland Chinese cop that is flawed and there’s some decent backstory there with his daughter. Most of the time cops in Mainland movies are not allowed to have personalities/backstories beyond loving China and protecting the best rule of law system in the world!
The holier than thou mainland cop character is mostly a result of the directive Xi Jinping gave in 2014, in which he urged the film industry to make “patriotism the main theme of literary and artistic creation”, ushering in the era of the ‘main melody’ genre. That’s why I always find that brief period where the Mainland industry started to go full blown blockbuster in the late 00’s/early 2010’s up until ‘Wolf Warrior’ so interesting, we wouldn’t get movies like ‘Switch’ today!
2014 is also roughly the cut off point for all those Hollywood/ Mainland funded movies I think as well. Seeing FanBingBing in Iron Man 3 and Xmen DOFP was awesome. Seeing Simon Yam talking about the awesome Central government in Transformers 4(5?) , less so.
To be fair, in recent years they’ve paired the CCP cop trope with 80s HK action in their low-mid budget iqiyi moves. There’s really well designed hand to hand action scenes now. All Xie Miao and Andy On movies for sure but also Aston Chen in Black Storm and Jiang Luxia in Curbing violence
You’re right, definitely not a coincidence! It’s been fascinating to see the (seeming) loophole the action genre has been able to take advantage of in the web movie space – just set the story in some made up country in South East Asia where everyone speaks Mandarin, and they can get away with a lot more than the big budget movies that get theatrical releases!
I do enjoy that aspect, but I feel like only a small percentage of those movies are enjoyable.
Your enjoyment of these iqiyi movies depends on your sensitivity on the boxes these mainland streaming movies still have to check. Tonally as well alot of these movies although are quite action heavy, the overall tone is still dour. The lack charm and definitely lack humor. Imagine if that Xie Miao/Andy On teamup was a ripoff of 48 Hours/Lethal Weapon instead of the weird story they came up with. Don’t know if XiJinPing will ever figure out that the key to people stop hating on china is to start exporting movies/tv/music/food (like Korea and Japan) that the rest of the world can enjoy.
That’s a spot on assessment of the loopholes. Like in China if you watch regular broadcast tv such as CCTV 1-99 ,the CCP equivalents of BBC, ABC, CBS etc, its the most depressing , propaganda driven North Korea style BS you can imagine. Switch over to billibilli on your phone/smart tv however and you get at least 70% of the youtube experience.
Based on this notion, every Asian film distributed by WellGo is bad, while Lionsgate and Universal consistently pick better films and do a better job distributing them.
No matter how bad a Jackie Chan film might be, distributors know people will watch it just because of his name, and these companies are always fighting over who gets them first. Lionsgate may have had some decent releases, but their track record is nothing to brag about.