Chen Kaige's kung fu movie on 3-D screens

Cast member Lin Chi-ling attends a press conference. Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn

The Chinese movie, Monk Comes Down the Mountain, will be released in 3-D formats for IMAX screens soon, its director Chen Kaige told a media conference in Shanghai.

On June 18, the veteran moviemaker, who directed Farewell My Concubine in 1993, released a trailer dubbed in English to draw international audiences to his latest movie.

According to its producers, Monk Comes Down the Mountain, scheduled to hit screens on July 3, is the first Chinese title with a countdown prologue made by the Canadian company IMAX Corp. To date, only two Hollywood blockbusters — Godzilla and Fast and Furious 7 — have had such prologues.

With a number of dazzling kung fu stunts, the tale, inspired from a best-selling novel by the same name, features a young Taoist monk's journey from his isolated temple life to the real world of despair.

It is Chen's first kung fu-theme movie in his career of three decades.

"Taoism originated from China and has shaped Chinese culture," Chen said, adding that the novel's rare approach to the ancient religion led him to seek an adaptation for the big screen.

The movie stars Hong Kong actor Aaron Kwok, Taiwan actor Chang Chen and actress Lin Chi-ling, and mainland actors Wang Baoqiang and Fan Wei.

The cast were given tough martial arts lessons for the movie. While Kwok was trained by a tai chi practitioner, Chang spend more than two months training with steel wires to prepare for his scenes.

The big-budget movie, which took some 213 days to shoot, had a crew of 200 people creating sets in Hebei province that mimicked buildings in 1930s' China.