Watch The RZA do martial arts in this trailer for Wu-Tang Vs. The Golden Phoenix

I’m constantly finding new references and new films related to my project, but when I read about The RZA’s Wu-Tang Vs. The Golden Phoenix, what shocked me most was that I had never heard of it. A few movie news websites had posted the trailer for this film over a year ago, but I’m not sure what happened to it, or why ‘mainstream’ movie news websites never picked up on it. What I do know is that I must watch it AS SOON AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE. Shout out to RZA, please consider posting a comment on this website, and give us (ME) an update on the status of The Golden Phoenix. The movie looks fuckin’ incredible.

I was wondering if this is a similar situation what The Wachowski Brothers dealt with after trying to get the first Matrix film financed by Warner Bros. They were given a little money to produce a brilliant little movie called Bound, as a ‘test’ to see if they could indeed direct. After Bound was completed, The Matrix was then fully financed by the Studio.

Until I get more information about Wu-Tang Vs. The Golden Phoenix, I’ll share what I know about the movie. According to QuietEarth, RZA calls the movie his “homage to the 70’s,” and it’s been in the making for at least ten years. The trailer below was released last year to commemorate RZA’s 20th year in the music industry. According to reports, the hip hop legend made Golden Phoenix to prove to himself and Hollywood that he could be taken seriously as a director (which must have worked out well, since Universal nabbed his screenplay for Man With the Iron Fists and gave him almost $20 million to make that film, which stars Russell Crowe, Pam Grier, Jamie Chung, Lucy Liu, Cung Le, Rick Yune, Dave Bautista and Byron Mann). Horror-meister and cult movie impresario Eli Roth, who’s helping out on Iron Fists, is billed as an executive producer for The Golden Phoenix, and RZA supplies his birth name for the director credit, Robert F. Diggs.

In Golden Phoenix, RZA has taken his vast knowledge of the Asian martial arts genre to create “a world where everyone fights…. and they’re all fighting for one thing – the Wu Tang weapon.”

Wu-Tang Vs. The Golden Phoenix features several kung fu legends, including a few I grew up with, including: Robert Tai, action director for the 1978 cult classic Five Deadly Venoms; Robert Li, who plays Chi-Kwon in the film; 34th generation Shaolin monk Shifu Shi Yan Ming; Dr. King Ogun Ali Muhammad, founder of the Universal African Fighting System; and of course Wu-Tang founder and creative center The RZA. Most people know that RZA and The Wu-Tang Clan are famous for merging hip hop and kung fu. What music fans don’t know is that RZA is also a serious martial artist – a 35th generation Shaolin disciple that has studied with Shifu Shi Yan Ming for years.

Unlike Golden Phoenix, Iron Fists is said to be modern and stylized like Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill saga (Tarantino helped RZA get his filmmaking chops together on KIll Bill). RZA has said that he definitely will release Wu Tang vs. The Golden Phoenix, but he hasn’t decided if the release date will be before or after The Man With The Iron Fists, which is due in theaters late this year or in early 2012.

‘Iron Fists’ takes place in feudal China, with RZA playing a blacksmith who makes weapons for a small village, who’s forced to defend himself and the villagers against a formidable enemy.

Check out the trailer for The RZA’s Wu-Tang Vs. The Golden Phoenix below.