EVERLASTING REGRET SCANDAL WATCH

Stanley Kwan is the George Cukor of Hong Kong: a gifted director of actresses, and a man with a near-flawless sensibility who's been able to put insanely delicate emotions onscreen with perfect taste. Jackie Chan has produced two of Kwan's previous films and both of them are masterpieces: ROUGE (starring the now-deceased Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung) and CENTER STAGE (starring a radiant Maggie Cheung).

Now Chan and Kwan have teamed up for EVERLASTING REGRET, a decades-spanning saga set in Shanghai and it's shaping up to be gorgeous. It's a little reminiscent of Wong Kar-wai's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE but I get a feeling Kwan is going to out-lush Wong's film. Apparently, Shanghai siren, Rebecca Pan (who played the landlady in ITMFL), was hired as a behavior and manners coach for star Sammi Cheng, and in early footage, Cheng is a spitting image of Pan. The flick also stars the ever reliable Tony Leung Kar-fai and the obligatory Daniel Wu.

But Sammi Cheng has been embroiled in a perfect storm of media speculation since March when she started looking unhealthy and acting funny. The gossiping classes have attributed her behavior (which apparently includes banging her head against walls on the set and collapsing into tears) to everything from lymphatic cancer to depression to man trouble. Close friends say that this is just the kind of Method acting that Cheng, who's best known for her performances in light romantic comedies, engages in, but even Tony Leung Kar-fai was reportedly unnerved by some of her behavior.

EVERLASTING REGRET was made simulatneously into a movie and a TV series, and whereas the TV series is already completed, the movie is taking longer than anticipated.

Click here for pictures of Jackie Chan visiting the set and meeting a happy-looking Sammi, a hip hop looking Tony Leung and glimpse a shockingly feral-looking Wille Chan (Jackie's longtime manager).

(Thanks to Hong Kong Entertainment News in Review)