Academy Award-nominated producer Bill Kong (Hero; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) joins EoM Presents to talk about his latest project, The Furious. He speaks to the importance of balancing strong acting performances with intense martial arts action, the expertise of director Kenji Tanigaki, and their goal to “outdo our ancestors” with the hand-to-hand combat in this film.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Thomas Manning: So, when you’re first looking at this film, it’s the martial arts spectacle that draws us in. But I really think it’s the characters and the heart of the story that make us care so much about the action. How do you work to balance that emotional side of films like this as a producer?
Bill Kong: My input on it was really in the script stage. We deliberately set out to make a story which is understandable to the world. It’s not complicated. It’s not a movie where you need your brain a lot, you know. My experience taught me that the story can be simple, but the characters must be fantastic. Otherwise, people don’t go into the movie, they don’t get into the character. So we spend a lot of time ironing out the different characters in the film. [Director Kenji Tanigaki] comes from an action choreographer [background] – but most importantly he knows that when a guy is fighting in action, he needs to act well as well. So that’s what he asks for, and he goes for. The actors that we go after in this film are good action fighters, but more importantly, they are good actors. Because he wants them to act well in the film while they are fighting. So that is the key. And he was able to keep the balance of that. So Kenji did the job very well on that front.
Xie Miao as Wang Wei in THE FURIOUS. Photo courtesy of TIFF.
Manning: Oh yes, Kenji was absolutely phenomenal. I spoke with him recently and he said that you kind of took a big gamble on him as the choice to direct this movie. And you know, that’s a gamble that definitely paid off. And since he said that, I wanted to give you the opportunity to speak more to Kenji as a director. What makes him so special as an action designer, a choreographer, and a director from your perspective?
Kong: I think Kenji somehow was born into this industry. Although he was a choreographer when he started, but he learned every day – he learns the whole trick. He watches movies. He watches movie in the cinema with the public. When he’s on the set, he’s very hardworking on his own job – but he also learns from watching others. So I think he’s a great learner. He doesn’t waste time like other people going drinking, going to sleep. As he’s on the set, he always learns as much as he can. I think that this is one of his gifts, because he’s learning every day. He’s watching a movie, and he’s trying to learn something from that movie. I think in this business or in this industry, it is important to be an everyday learner. You try to learn something every day. I think he’s a guy like that. So he might not know it today, but before you know it, he will learn it from other places. So I have given him a chance to show us what he has learned in the last few years, and he showed us in [this] movie.
Manning: He absolutely did. And I know that you’ve worked in the martial arts genre before and you’ve worked on some action films – but I think this film is pretty unique in your career in terms of the tone and the style of the action. So, what inspired you to jump into action that was more in this nature?
Kong: I think in the last 10, 15, 20 years, we’ve had visual effects. Digital, you know. All these kinds of big movies. These $400 million movies. These kinds of movies have really opened our eyes to the imagination of the world. So, then when we get started to try a movie, when we go back to do a movie for the world, for the international [audiences], what do we do? The one thing we know is there’s no way we can compete with the American big studio movie. First of all, we don’t have the expertise – we don’t have the money. Visual effects digital-wise, we are kindergarten compared to the studios. They are real professionals or a PhD professor, we are kindergarten students. So okay, let’s go back to do something that they don’t know how to do – let’s go back to fists. Instead of using digital, we use our fists. We use our bodies, we use real – we don’t use visual effects. We have our actors fall on the floor themselves. Not digital – you don’t need to erase them, you know, things like that. So that’s why we go to our basics. What we know best is using our bare hands. Let’s do something raw. Let’s go back to hand-to-hand combat and go from there. Create from there. Not doing the same thing. Doing the same kind of [hand-to-hand combat] thing, but notch it up five times, to something that people have never seen before. That’s the ambition. Try to outdo ourselves. Outdo our ancestors. We’re not fighting with AI or digital or money. We’re fighting the war with our bare hands and our body. That’s how we approach this.
L-R: Xie Miao as Wang Wei and Joe Taslim as Navin in THE FURIOUS. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.
Manning: Yeah, I think you really did outdo yourselves like you aimed to do. I heard that it took about 60 days just to shoot this movie. So, over the course of that extended period – the production itself – what was the most challenging thing for you as a producer during the shooting time frame?
Bill Kong: Actually, it wasn’t a challenge at all. I think Kenji did a great job. He didn’t go very much over budget. I think that the most challenging thing was a couple of action scenes. Like the fight scene in the bar, in the cage, where five or six people are on top of each other. Although they rehearse it, plan it – rehearse it for two months – as they get on set and do that, it’s still difficult to get it right. Because it’s one [person] sitting or standing on top of each other, you know. That scene is kind of memorable in that way, because it took several times to get that done. So that was a scene which I thought was memorable. But it was never a challenge. There was never any emergency in that way. There was the weather, things like that, but it’s normal. I think it was a very smooth shoot. But we were in Thailand a long time. Something like 60 or 70 [days of shooting].
Official Synopsis:
After the daughter of Wang Wei (Xie Miao) is kidnapped by a criminal network and he receives no help from the corrupt police, Wei sets out on a rampage to find her himself. His only ally is Navin (Joe Taslim) – a relentless journalist whose wife has mysteriously disappeared. Fueled by a furious vengeance, the unlikely duo ruthlessly fights against the kidnappers in this explosive martial arts showdown.
In theaters June 12th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Lionsgate The Furious webpage.
Thomas Manning is a member of the NCFCA, SEFCA, and CCA, and also the co-host of the television show and radio program Meet Me at the Movies. He has served as a production assistant and voting member on the Film Selection Committee for the Real to Reel Film Festival. Additionally, he manages his own film review and interview site, The Run-Down on Movies. Manning is a graduate of Gardner-Webb University with a double-major in Communications and English. His passion for cinema and storytelling is rivaled only by his love for the music of Taylor Swift.
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Categories: EoM Presents, Filmmaker Interviews, Publications
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