January 10, 2025: Donnie Yen has confirmed the ‘Sleeping Dogs’ movie has been shelved.

The 61-year-old actor had been announced to be starring in a film adaptation of the United Front action-adventure title as protagonist Wei Shen in 2017, though after years of silence, Yen has now admitted the project is no longer happening.

In an interview with Polygon, he said: “I spent a lot of time and did a lot of work with these producers, and I even invested some of my own money into obtaining the drafts and some of the rights.

“I waited for years. Years. And I really want to do it. I have all these visions in my head, and unfortunately … I don’t know, you know how Hollywood goes, right? I spent many, many years on it. It was an unfortunate thing.”

After being announced over seven years ago, Original Film had approached ‘Nobody 2’ director Timo Tjahjanto to helm the ‘Sleeping Dogs’ movie, though no official deal between the studio and filmmaker ever materialised.

In 2018, Yen said the flick was “in motion”, and told fans “sometimes great things take a bit of time”.

The ‘Sleeping Dogs’ game – which was published by Square Enix – released in 2012, and allowed players to explore Hong Kong in a ‘Grand Theft Auto’-style of open-world gameplay.