The Hollywood Reporter entertainment trade newspaper reports that international star Chow Yun-Fat will play the character Master Roshi in Twentieth Century Fox 's live-action film adaptation of Akira Toriyama 's Dragon Ball action manga. In the original manga and in the film version, Master Roshi is a mentor of the lead character Son Goku (Justin Chatwin), and he helps train Goku in martial arts.
Chow rose to fame in Hong Kong with a series of John Woo films that included A Better Tomorrow, The Killer , and Hard Boiled . He found some success outside Hong Kong in such films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Curse of the Golden Flower, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End . Chow joins a Dragon Ball cast that already includes Chatwin, James Marsters (Piccolo), Jamie Chung (Chi Chi), Emmy Rossum (Bulma), Eriko Tamura (Mai), and Joon Park (Yamcha). Shooting has begun in Mexico City and Los Angeles, and the studio is planning for an August 15 release.
During his November 11 panel at Pacific Media Expo in Los Angeles, actor James Kyson Lee ( Heroes television series' Ando) said that he is trying out for the role of Yamcha in 20th Century Fox's live-action adaptation of Akira Toriyama 's Dragon Ball manga. He says that the movie is planned for a 2010 release and that he approved of the script so far. He also said that he was a childhood fan of manga such as Dragon Ball and Takehiko Inoue 's Slam Dunk -- the latter of which he had read the entire run. 2007-11-11 18:17 EST