page_title: The Man with the Iron Fists
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: The Man with the Iron Fists / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Wu Tang Clan co-founder RZA in New York City's Union Square Barnes &amp; Noble to read from The Tao of Wu, a book about the philosophy behind the Wu Tang Clan.
context_page_description: The Man with the Iron Fists is a 2012 American martial arts film directed by RZA and written by RZA and Eli Roth. The film stars RZA, Russell Crowe, Cung Le, Lucy Liu, Byron Mann, Rick Yune, Dave Bautista, and Jamie Chung. Set in 19th century China, the story follows a series of lone warriors who are forced to unite to defeat a common foe and save their home of Jungle Village.
  Development began in 2005 when RZA shared his idea for the film with Roth. After nearly two years of development, Roth and RZA secured financial backing in May 2010. Filming began in December 2010 on a $15 million budget and concluded by March 2011. The film was shot in Shanghai and at other locations in China. RZA and Howard Drossin composed the film's musical score, and RZA produced its soundtrack, which featured several new songs by various artists. A series of concerts featuring music from the soundtrack were held to promote the film.
  The film was released in North America on November 2, 2012.
context_section_description: Development of the film began in 2003 when RZA produced the soundtrack for Quentin Tarantino's film Kill Bill. RZA set himself a $50,000 budget and flew to the Kill Bill set in Beijing, where he spent approximately thirty days taking notes on the way Tarantino directed the film. In 2005, RZA met Eli Roth in Iceland, and they traveled together to LA. During the journey, RZA told Roth of his idea for a kung fu genre film, which attracted Roth's interest, but no further progress was made. RZA completed the story for the film, but Roth convinced him that he would need a completed screenplay for the project to gain any support. In 2007, after Roth's Hostel: Part II was released, Roth and RZA agreed to seriously pursue the project. The pair took the project to several studios and met with their preferred producer, Edward R. Pressman. One of the studios suggested setting the film in a post-apocalyptic situation, which RZA considered. They took the project to Strike Entertainment, which considered that it needed more development and assigned several writers to rewrite the script, which began to depart from RZA's initial idea.
  RZA continued to work with Strike Entertainment's writers, but Roth, who returned from filming Inglourious Basterds, was disappointed with the rewritten screenplay and he and RZA spent a year developing and finalizing it. In total, they spent between 18 months and 2 years developing the screenplay in between other projects, and turned RZA's 90-page story into a 130-page screenplay. Citing the specificity of the fictional universe in the Star Wars series, Roth said that the pair tried to fully define the aspects of The Man with the Iron Fists to make it interesting without fight scenes. Roth said that RZA had "imagined every tribe, every fighting style, every costume". The original script focused on several animal-themed clans fighting over territory, in particular Jungle Village, which acted as a center for shipments. As the script developed, several of the clans were removed, and the focus shifted to commerce and the transportation of government gold, which also introduced the government as a higher power over the clans. RZA and Roth approached fights in the script by introducing a new character, fighting style or weapon to avoid monotony; if a fight did not advance the story, they removed it.
  RZA then financed and directed a short martial arts film called Wu-Tang vs. the Golden Phoenix featuring Hong Kong-based, kung-fu-trained actors. When he and Roth pitched The Man with the Iron Fists to producers, RZA used the short film to prove that he could handle the martial arts action and be trusted to take on his first directing role. On May 7, 2010, Universal Pictures announced it had agreed to finance and distribute the film, which Roth and Strike Entertainment's Marc Abraham and Eric Newman would produce. The producers gave RZA a $20 million budget.
  During the development process, Tarantino agreed to lend his name to the film with a "presented by" credit. In October 2012, RZA said that he and Tarantino had intended to cross over The Man with the Iron Fists with Tarantino's 2012 Western Django Unchained. The crossover would have included a younger version of RZA's blacksmith character in a slave auction, but scheduling conflicts prevented RZA's participation. The Man with the Iron Fists spent 14 weeks in pre-production including four to six weeks on location scouting. RZA insisted that six weeks of pre-production would be sufficient, but Marc Abraham told him to take 14 weeks, for which RZA was later thankful after he reached week 13 and still needed more time. During filming, RZA and Roth discussed the potential for a sequel if the film was successful.
caption: RZA in 2009. The Man with the Iron Fists is his first feature film as director
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