Last year Keanu Reeves started talking about Man of Tai Chi, which would be his first feature project as a director. The martial arts film would be set in the present day, but is intended as an homage to classic kung-fu films. Now Mr. Reeves says he wants to play the villain in the film, which is gathering financing now.

Speaking to MTV, he said,

We want to do it in Chinese and English, do it as kind of a co-production with CFG perhaps, which is a Chinese film group, kind of a studio. It’s tricky.

That’s the sort of financing deal we might start seeing a lot of soon. It’s how Ryan Johnson’s Looper got made, and we’ve already started to hear about other films looking to use Chinese money to get off the ground. (Not the Red Dawn remake, though.)

The Man of Tai Chi script is packed with action, he says.

There’s 18 fights. We’ve timed it out. It’s about 40 minutes of fighting. I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie. Good story, good plot — but let’s get some good kung fu going!

Honestly, that sounds like fun, and possibly a good double-feature with RZA’s The Man With the Iron Fists. Keanu Reeves has got some solid kung-fu training thanks to the Matrix films, and hopefully all that experience, even though it is a few years in the past, can help shape Man of Tai Chi. But first he’s shooting the samurai film 47 Ronin, which he just described as follows: