Chow Yun-fat, despite a varied career is still mostly known as that guy in those John Woo movies who jumps through the air shooting two guns. He’s just never really crossed over the way some of his contemporaries like Jackie Chan and Jet Li have. But the man has range, so much range he’ll go as far away from slo-motion action sequences as possible by playing the philosopher Confucius.

Screen Daily reports that Chow has been confirmed as the lead in the Confucius biopic being put together by a Beijing based company. In the film with him will be Chen Daoming as Lao Zi, the founder of Taoism, and Zhou Xun as the movie’s female lead.

As a gleefully dumb American, my knowledge of Confucious is mostly limited to vaguely racist comedy bits in which a fat white guy glues on a Fu Manchu and wanders around spouting things like “Confucious say… man who gets kicked in testicles, left holding bag.”

Wikipedia, while not always entirely accurate should on this subject at least, provide better clues as to what this movie might be about than anything I have to say. Here’s how they describe Confucius: He “was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and Vietnamese thought and life. His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity. These values gained prominence in China over other doctrines, such as Legalism or Taoism during the Han Dynasty[2][3][4] (206 BC – 220 AD).”

Consider yourself educated.