'Assassin’s Creed' producer Philip Lee says Chinese cinema ‘may be getting worse’
The producer of 'Cloud Atlas'; 'The Dark Knight'; 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'; and 'The Revenant' loves the challenge of balancing art and business
Even ardent film buffs might be hard-pressed to identify what the following directors have in common: Mexico’s Alejandro González Iñárritu; Englishman Christopher Nolan; Canadian Paul Haggis; Germany’s Tom Tykwer; Dutchman Jan de Bont; Americans Terrence Malick and the Wachowski siblings; Hong Kong’s Ronny Yu; Taiwan-born Ang Lee; and China’s Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou.
Some in this list make crowd-pleasing blockbusters. Some are renowned auteurs, with more than a few Oscars between them. As it turns out, the common thread uniting their disparate styles is producer Philip Lee, who’s worked with them all and lived to tell the tales. Mention that quite a few of these directors have reputations for being rather controlling, and Lee gives a good-natured laugh. “If they are good, why not? If I were them, I would be controlling too.”
His own background may explain his affinity with demanding creative types. Now based in Singapore with his Singaporean wife and three daughters, Lee started his producing career in the 1980s with Hong Kong’s Salon Films, where he worked on Hollywood projects shooting in Asia. He later studied directing in Japan, at Nihon University’s College of Arts, and this has helped him immensely as a producer.
“I can become very good friends with directors. I know how they think; why they feel insecure; when is the best time to talk to them,” he says. “Being a director can be very lonely, and you have to gain their trust. My purpose is to help them make a great movie, which eventually will benefit myself as well. If you’re talking to someone who’s only thinking about money and have no ideas about story and characters, why waste your time?”
Earlier this year, Lee started production company Facing East with business partner and lawyer Markus Barmettler. He is reviving a project – The 19th Step – which was previously announced in 2008 but eventually fell through due to what Lee describes as “stupid reasons”. Paul Haggis will also write and direct a trilogy for Facing East based on US author Paolo Bacigalupi’s young adult novels, beginning with Ship Breaker.
Other upcoming projects include Inversion, a science-fiction piece written by Haggis; and Radegund, a second world war drama directed by the legendary Malick. But first, he has action film Assassin’s Creed opening in Hong Kong on December 22. Unusually for Lee, this is a project based on a popular video game, and its backers have hopes of turning it into a profitable franchise. Beneath the film’s commercial ambitions lie a wealth of potent creative talents who first made their names in the arthouse scene, chief among them Australian director Justin Kurzel, and leading man Michael Fassbender.
