Fast And The Furious star Sung Kang is making his own movie where the cars go very fast
Kang, best known as Han in the Fast franchise, is gearing up to direct an adaptation of driving manga Initial D
Apparently unable to live a life in which he is only associated with one movie franchise in which people do extremely stupid things with cars, Fast And The Furious star Sung Kang is gearing up to get an automotive chaos franchise of his very own. And not just as a possible performer: Kang, who directed his first movie, horror-comedy film Shaky Shivers, last year, will also direct this planned adaptation of famed driving manga Initial D.
Best known for playing the part of Han, Tokyo Drifter extraordinaire, in the Fast movies—a part he only recently began reprising, to the Family-loving delight of many fans of the franchise—Kang’s new project will see him master drifting of an altogether more rural sort. That’s because Initial D, based on the highly influential ’90s manga series by Shuichi Shigeno, is all about drivers tackling the mountain roads of the Japanese countryside, which sounds honestly even more terrifying than facing down Tokyo city streets. Also, one of the gimmicks of the series is that hero Takumi accomplishes most of his automotive feats from behind the wheel of an aging Toyota sedan; reportedly, Kang is working with well-known Porsche tuner RWB to recreate the car in question for his film.
In an interview that touched on the film with South China Morning Post, Kang made it clear that he’s unlikely to ever direct himself in a film, citing lessons he learned from Denzel Washington on the set of Antwone Fisher. (“I don’t consider myself the best actor, and I’m definitely not the best director,” he notes in the interview. “So that’s two things I’m not great at. Why would I double that up?”) As for Initial D, he described the project as being “about cars and drifting and cool things like that. Almost a Rocky or Karate Kid. A fun, big-budget movie that expresses my love affair for cars.” The project is one of two that Kang is developing at the moment, the other being a more autobiographical film about growing up in a biracial family in Georgia.