Sleeping Dogs earned plenty of praise in 2012 for creating a sandbox that was heavily influenced by Hong Kong’s action films, and it wasn’t long before the game caught the attention of one of the biggest names in martial arts movies, Donnie Yen. For years now, Yen has been looking to get an adaptation of the game onto the big screen, and in a new interview, the action star sounded confident about the project finally getting off the ground.
“I’m still hopeful. I mean, every day they tell me it’s going to happen,” Yen said to Collider. “I’m co-producing and collaborating with [producers] Neil Moritz and Toby [Ascher], with their company, and currently talking with a couple of big platforms. And they tell me every single day it’s going to happen, so we’ll see. Like I said, I believe in destiny. So, if it’s going to happen, hopefully, it will happen the first half of next year.”
The original game had players take control of undercover cop Wei Shen, who was tasked with infiltrating the Triad gangs operating in Hong Kong and gathering evidence on their various illegal activities. Sleeping Dogs drew a lot of inspiration from the action films that were produced in Hong Kong, as Shen’s arsenal of martial arts skills was complemented by parkour, gunplay, and car chase sequences.
Yen currently owns the filmmaking rights to the game, and when its production does eventually begin, the plan is to make “more of a modern, updated version” of Sleeping Dogs instead of a full adaptation, he added. Back in July of 2020, Yen teased that production was going to begin soon.
Despite being well-received by critics and fans, Sleeping Dogs never managed to become a franchise. A spin-off, Triad Wars, was canceled during its beta, and United Front Games shut down in 2016.
A remaster was released for PS4 and Xbox One a few years later, upgrading the game for those consoles and packing in all of the Sleeping Dogs DLC in for good measure, which includes an entire chapter of Wei Shen fighting vengeful ghosts who have escaped from hell.
Source: Gamespot
