Bruce Lee Is Back

The martial artist Bruce Lee died in 1973 at the age of 32. Today, everyone thinks of Lee as an icon whose hit movie, Enter the Dragon, inspired a generation of filmmakers. But Lee passed away before the film even hit theaters. Who knows how many more films Lee would have produced had he lived?

Fans might soon get a chance to see Lee back in action on the silver screen. Lee ranks 12th on our list of theTop Earning Dead Celebrities this year with $7 million. His estate, which is run by his daughter Shannon, took the first steps toward realizing the dream of a new Bruce Lee movie with a short film sponsored by Johnnie Walker. Made for the whiskey company’s Keep Walking campaign, the 90 -second spot features Lee in modern times on a balcony in Hong Kong, poetically explaining how you have to make your own rules and follow your own instinct.

 The spot took two years to produce. Artists watched videos of Lee, and using a computerized wire screen mask, replicated facial expressions and nuances like the movement on Lee’s face between a neutral look and a smile. The face was then superimposed on an actor. The process was very similar to the one used in the movie Benjamin Button where Brad Pitt played an old man for the first half of the film.

 “Because of our excitement around seeing if the technology could really work, we thought this was a worthwhile endeavor,” says Shannon Lee. The spot was shown in movie theaters in Hong Kong but once it hit the Internet, it sparked something of a controversy. Online, Lee was speaking in Mandarin to reach out to the massive Chinese audience.

But Hong Kong fans were outraged because in real life, Lee only spoke Cantonese (and English). Fans were also annoyed by the fact that the piece certainly felt like an ad for Johnnie Walker and Lee was famously fastidious about what he put in his body. He never drank alcohol. Shannon Lee says that the reason they agreed to work with Walker was because the Keep Walking campaign so closely reflected Bruce Lee’s own “walk on” philosophy.

For the most part, she says the response to the piece has been positive. Lee says she is open to using this kind of technology again. The estate is at work on a Bruce Lee museum in Seattle where she thinks a virtual Bruce Lee could help with educational exhibits. “Do I think the technology could carry itself front and center for a 90-minute movie?” asks Lee. “That remains to be seen. But given enough time and enough artistic people, I’m sure it can be done.”

If Bruce Lee shows up even in a cameo in a film, it could pave the way for other estates to take up the reins and we could see deceased stars making comebacks in the next few years.

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