Bruce Lee only completed four martial arts movies, but was actually involved in several projects that never took off, for one reason or another.
Bruce Lee was involved in several projects that never saw the light of day. Some simply fell apart, while others never even entered production due to the actor’s untimely death. During his rather short acting career, Lee only starred in five martial arts movies, one of which being an incomplete film.
After playing Kato for two seasons of ABC’s Green Hornet TV series, Bruce Lee went to Hong Kong and started making kung fu movies with Golden Harvest. Lee became an instant star with his role in 1971’s The Big Boss, in which he played a martial artist whose vow never to fight again is tested by a gang of criminals. Lee’s fame grew even bigger with the release of his second film,
Fist of Fury, followed by Way of the Dragon, which Lee also directed. His most famous role was in Enter the Dragon, his first and only Hollywood film. The movie hit theaters in August 1973, one month after his death at the age of 32.
There were other movies and shows that Lee at one point or another had intentions to make, but various circumstances prevented them from ever going anywhere. Here’s every unmade project the martial arts legend was attached to.
After coming to Los Angeles in the 1960s, Lee opened martial arts schools and held public kung fu demonstrations. One of these attracted the attention of TV producer William Dozier, who planned to have Lee star in a series titled Number One Son, which would
have been about the son of Charlie Chan, a Chinese detective who was featured in several mystery novels. The show never moved forward, and Lee got the part of Kato in Green Hornet instead.
Shortly after Green Hornet’s cancellation, Bruce Lee was briefly in talks to co-star in a different Charlie Chan TV series, called Charlie and Chan. This time, Lee would have played a kung fu teacher who was friends with Chan. Lee compared the series to the 1960s secret agent show, I Spy. The series never got past the planning stage.
Before his breakout performance in The Big Boss, Bruce Lee wanted to make The Silent Flute, a film he co-wrote with screenwriter Stirling Silliphant and A-list Hollywood movie star, James Coburn. What Lee wanted to do with The Silent Flute was
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tell a story that “illustrates a great difference between Oriental and Western thinking.” The main protagonist, played by James Coburn, was to learn kung fu from a martial arts master played by Lee. It was envisioned as a hybrid martial arts Western. If made, it would have been a first for both genres.
Though Lee and Coburn shared a storied friendship, the two had trouble getting along and both actors abandoned the project. Silliphant tried to get it going again a year or so later, but Lee — whose career had already taken off — was no longer interested. Years after Lee’s death, it was rewritten and given a new title: Circle of Iron. The movie starred David Carradine and Christopher Lee.
Though The Silent Flute didn’t work out, Bruce Lee didn’t give up on his idea about making a Western with a martial arts theme. Lee wrote treatment for a TV series called The Warrior that would see him playing a kung fu expert traversing the American Wild West. Lee pitched the show to Warner Bros, but the studio rejected the idea. When Warner Bros. made Kung Fu, a show that followed a similar concept, they were accused of stealing his ideas, but nothing was ever proven. In recent years, Bruce Lee’s treatment was finally adapted properly when Cinamax produced Warrior.
Yellow-Faced Tiger was almost Lee’s third martial arts movie with Golden Harvest. It would have been directed by Lo Wei, who previously directed both The Big Boss and Fist of Fury.
But Lee reportedly experienced a lot of difficulties working with Lo Wei, and backed out of the project. Ultimately, the movie was still made in 1974 under the new title of Slaughter in San Francisco, but with Chuck Norris as the film’s lead.
Very little is known about Dragon of Jade, a movie that Bruce Lee planned to make with Golden Harvest before accepting the starring role in Enter the Dragon. Test photos of Lee for Dragon of Jade reveal that it would have been a wuxia film. Wuxia is as a genre where the story is a period piece and the main characters are martial artists and swordsmen. Wuxia films were a dime-a-dozen in Hong Kong during the 1970s for both Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest, but it would have been something new for Lee, whose movies were all set in the 20th century.
regardless of this fact, it’s still appreciated by Bruce Lee fans not for its story, but for the fight scenes that Lee did get to finish.
Despite being the most popular martial arts icon of all-time, Lee never made a single movie with Shaw Brothers, the biggest studio in the kung fu industry between the 1960s and the early 1980s. Lee was offered a contract with them in the early 1970s, but he felt the money wasn’t enough. That’s when he went to their competitor, Golden Harvest, and made The Big Boss. Supposedly, Shaw Brothers did eventually reach a deal with Lee. Sometime in late 1973, Lee was to star in one of their films. According to rumors, it would have been titled Seven Sons of the Jade Dragon and helmed by Chor Yuen, one of Shaw Brothers’ top directors. It’s unclear if this movie would have been Lee’s next project after Game of Death.