Relax. Disney isn’t going to do something dumb like cast Anne Hathaway as the lead in their live-action Mulan. It’s a shame that nowadays stuff like that has to be said. They’ve done the Chinese legend right and cast an actual Chinese actress, Liu Yifei also known as Crystal Liu, after an extensive search that stretched five continents.
Why it took them so long and so far to find the Forbidden Kingdom actress is beyond me, but at least they made a strong choice. She’s also appeared alongside Nicolas Cage in 2014’s Outcast, and recently starred with Emile Hirsch in The Chinese Widow, a film that recently caused a bit of a stir at the Shanghai International Film Festival.
This will be Disney’s secone adaptation of the classic Mulan legend about
Hua Mulan, a young girl who poses as a man so she can fight in the military. The first was 1998’s animated movie, which earned $304M worldwide but was not well-received in China. Disney will obviously want to rectify that and casting Yifei was a good first step.
Directed by Niki Caro, Mulan will open in 2019. [THR]
