Ek Tha Tiger Inspired From A Chinese Movie?

Bollywood's muscleman Salman Khan's latest movie 'Ek tha Tiger' or there once was a man named Tiger – that released to rave reviews recently echoes a similar story line to a 2003 Chinese film of a similar name. – Xiao sheng Ar hu ???? - translated as star runner, but literally meaning Young rebellious tiger.

Similar to Salman Khan, the protagonist in the film Andy Lau or Liu De hua in Mandarin is a rebellious fighter that doubles up as a secret agent. A larger than life superstar in his own right, Andy Lau Tak-Wah MH, is a Hong Kong Cantopop singer, actor, and film producer. Lau has been one of Hong Kong's most commercially successful film actors since the mid-1980s, performing in more than 160 films while maintaining a successful singing career at the same time. In the 1990s, Lau was branded by the media as one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop (????) along with Aaron Kwok, Jacky Cheung and Leon Lai.

The film – Xiao sheng Ar hu focuses on displaying various martial arts including Muay Thai kickboxing and Japanese Taekwondo. A touch of woman power also makes its debut with love playing an underlying agent. Akin to its Bollywood blockbuster, A Kim's role like Katrina Kaif's is that of a strong woman character, who enchants the young fighter Tank played by Andy Lau. As the film progresses and the plot thickens, his fight isn't just to protect her physically, but its also to teach her a lesson – about love, letting go and not giving up in what you believe in.

This is the first time that we've come across a Bollywood film being influenced so strongly by a Hong Kong Chinese film. Considering many Indian serials that follow joint family dramas are watched in China, 3 idiots was a runaway success and our forms of entertainment – song and dance or martial arts are equally demanded by both audiences, it would be interesting to see how we can borrow from each others movies. China specially is keen to learn from India, due to the size and scale of Bollywood – ranked the second largest movie industry in the world after Hollywood. While joint collaborations of crews from both China and India are becoming common, a localisation and adaptation of story lines is also welcome

Source: http://www.icec-council.org/news/bollywood-borrows-script-china