The idea for
Blood Brothers first began to gain traction when producers
John Woo and
Terence Chang watched Tan's
Double Blade, a music video starring Taiwanese pop star
Jay Chou, and contacted Tan expressing interest in producing a feature-length film with the young director. Up to this point, Tan had worked primarily as a fashion photographer. It was
co-produced by the Taiwanese
production company CMC Entertainment, the mainland Chinese
Sil-Metropole Organisation,
Terence Chang's
Lion Rock Productions and Hong Kong
film director John Woo, and is Woo's first time as producer of another director's film. Once Woo and Chang were on board, however, Tan was able to seriously develop his concept for the film. Given Tan's overseas upbringing and lack of
Mandarin speaking and writing ability (he was born in
Manila and studied in
London), the
screenplay was originally written in
English. As such, Tan collaborated with native Chinese writer, Jiang Dan to translate his film into natural sounding Chinese. Despite Tan's initial concerns that Jiang Dan would not understand the Leone or Peckinpah influences, he later felt that her contributions to the story helped flesh out the film's romantic elements and in particular expanded upon the feminine perspectives of Shu Qi's and Lulu Li's characters.
Fight choreography, in particular the film's many gun battles, was done by Hong Kong veteran action director
Philip Kwok, who was also involved in the action choreography for John Woo's
1992 Hong Kong film Hard Boiled. ==Release==