Your first look at Liu Yifei as Disney’s live-action Mulan. Photo : Disney

Disney just announced production has begun on Niki Caro’s highly-anticipated live-action version of Mulan, and released the first photo of actress Liu Yifei as the title character . That’s her above, obviously, looking as fierce and bad ass as one would have hoped.


Yifei was found after a long search to cast the part and will join an impressive cast including Donnie Yen (Rogue One), Jason Scott Lee (Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story), Yoson An (The Meg), Utkarsh Ambudkar (Pitch Perfect), Tzi Ma (Arrival), Rosalind Chao (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Gong Li (Memoirs of a Geisha), and Jet Li (Hero, both the movie and in real life), just to name a few.

There’s still no word whether or not Caro’s version of the legendary story will use any of the music from the popular 1998 Disney animated film, which has been a point of contention (among other things) for a while. But the story everyone knows and loves, about a young woman masquerading as a man to fight for her family and people, is still intact no matter what.


Mulan will be shooting on location in New Zealand and China, and is aiming for a release date of March 27, 2020.