Andy Lau (HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, INFERNAL AFFAIRS) is a talented guy, and it would have been awesome to see him play a part (literally and figuratively) in the saga of Tony Stark. Lau was set to take on the role of a “businessman [who] has his daughter kidnapped which lures Iron Man to China” and whose technology eventually helps Iron Man to defeat Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian and his Extremis biotechnology.
The aforementioned irony comes from the fact that the fifty year-old Lau has dropped out due to wishing to spend more time with his newborn daughter (she’s 1 1/2 months old).
The current goal is to find “a male actor over the age of 40 with strong English skills” in place of Lau, with the top two contenders being “Chinese actors Chen Daoming and Wu Xiubo. The 57-year-old Chen is highly respected for his versatility and is perhaps best known for playing Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the 2002 film Hero, while the 43-year-old Wu rose to acclaim as the protagonist in the Chinese television drama Before the Dawn.”
I’m not familiar with the latter actor, but I do know that the Chen Daoming was phenomenal in HERO. Here’s to hoping we find out about the new casting soon.