[News] Movie rumors for Yoon Eun-hye, who denies casting is final.

[News] Movie rumors for Yoon Eun-hye, who denies casting is final.
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Nothing’s confirmed yet, but the newest Yoon Eun-hye news is that she’s considering taking the lead role in a Korea-China-Japan co-production, a movie centering around the last love of Cao Cao, a powerful warlord, military tactician, and poet in the twilight years of the Three Kingdoms era. (He died in 220 A.D.) The project is titled Dong Jak Dae or Tong Que Tai, depending on which language you’re translating.

According to reports by a Chinese media outlet, other lead roles will be played by China’s Chow Yun-fat (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Taiwan’s Alec Su (The Message), and Japan’s Tamaki Hiroshi (Nodame Cantabile). Helming the project will be Chinese director Zhao Lin Shan.

Chow Yun-fat will play Cao Cao, and Yoon would play his “star-crossed heroine,” the “pure beauty” who was with him at his death. The plot uses real-life discoveries as its jumping-off point; the Henan Provincial Cultural Heritage Bureau announced in 2009 that Cao Cao’s excavated tomb revealed the remains of two females (one aged 20, one about 50) buried with him. The women’s identities remain a mystery.

Although early articles stated that Yoon Eun-hye has been cast, her reps stated that she has received the offer but has not decided yet, and one source from her agency’s side put the likelihood of her taking the role at 50%.

On one hand, this could be a great opportunity for Yoon Eun-hye, who’s one of a very small number of Hallyu actresses with that level of pan-Asian popularity. (The only others I might put on her level are Song Hye-gyo and…uh, that’s probably it.) On the other hand, Yoon Eun-hye with Chow Yun-fat? I can’t help but feel she’d be eaten alive, and while she’s enormously appealing and charismatic, Yoon’s biggest sticking point as an actress has always been… her acting. And if we’re not pulling any punches here, there’s the fact that her last three projects have been major flops. My Fair Lady, My Black Minidress, and Lie To Me — all commercially and critically unsuccessful.

If she does end up taking this, it would be pretty interesting to see her stretch herself and take on a new genre. Maybe it’s time for her to ditch the rom-coms and try something more meaty. I did want to see her tackle romantic melodrama with Love Song, before that project was shelved.

Either way, she’ll have to decide soon; the project is set to begin filming next month in Beijing, and hopes to be ready for an October 2012 release throughout Asia.