Paramount Pictures and Michael Bay are making a clearly concerted effort to reach out to the burgeoning Chinese film market for next year’s Transformers 4.
Paramount announced earlier today that Asian superstar Han Geng will be one of the many new faces coming in for what amounts to a soft-reboot for the Transformers franchise. He will be joining stars Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Nicola Peltz and Kelsey Grammar in leading the ensemble of the non-robot or CGI variety. However, he is also joining another Chinese star, Li Bingbing, as the film’s new Eastern face.
Geng is known in China as “King of Popularity” and has long been a celebrity before his recent foray into acting; Geng got his start as a member of a Korean boy band known as Super Junior.
Similarly, Bingbing is a Chinese actress and singer who has made waves in international films, including opposite Jackie Chan and Jet Li in 2008’s The Forbidden Kingdom. She also has appeared in Hollywood franchising before as the embodiment of Ada Wong in the most recent Resident Evil films.
Robots will hit each other on June 27, 2014.