It is not uncommon for a film to be held up in pre-production. Whether it is dealing with drop-outs, production costs, or a simple unwillingness to get a script together, many things can hold up a production for months. In the case of Chinese director Jiang Wen's next project, a western/comedy titled Let The Bullets Fly, it took nine rewrites and 10 different endings before the all clear was given on Monday. And now, just two days later, the film has finally locked up its star: Chow Yun-Fat.

In the film, according to Variety, Yun-Fat will play alongside Wen, who, in China, is more renowned for his work in front of the camera than behind it (though his most recent work was directing a segment for the anthological New York, I Love You, which was given a limited release last week.)

Yun-Fat's career has taken an unfortunate turn in America (I still find it hard to believe that he actually signed on to Dragonball: Evolution), but he is as popular as ever in his native Hong Kong, where he has arguably produced his best work, including his 1989 classic The Killer. He most recently finished the the visually stunning Confucius (see trailer here), and has two American projects coming up (Mikael Håfström's Shanghai, and Johnnie To's The Red Circle), so it is possible he is trying to play the numbers to eventually give us another classic stateside.