Tony Jaa now free to pursue what's left of his dreams
One of the great showbiz battles of recent years has come to an end with perennial studio heavyweight Somsak "Sia Jiang" Techaratanaprasert announcing that he has decided to withdraw his lawsuit against the champion of the Thai martial-arts box office,
Sia Jiang, head of Sahamongkol Film, declared in the Thai-language media at the weekend that he’s calling off the courtroom showdown with Jaa. He said he’s too old to have lawyers as ring men and, anyway, he just wants to forgive the actor he once loved like a son and let him pursue his Hollywood dreams. From now on they’ll have nothing to do with one another, Sia Jiang said, and hopefully Jaa can capitalise on the crack at international stardom afforded by his role in the American car-racing blockbuster “Furious 7”. For his part, Sia Jiang wants to keep his studio’s focus strictly on Thai cinema, especially now with the local industry struggling to keep pace with foreign rivals.
He said he wouldn’t have gone so far except to protect his company’s rights, because it had invested big money and a lot of time in the actor, in fact turning him into a world-famous action hero. Asked whether he’d appreciate a visit from Jaa now that the hatchet’s been buried, Sia Jiang said he didn’t really care – it doesn’t matter anymore. “I just want him to know we’re done so he can work without worry. I have to my own work to do too.”
The conflict between Jaa and Sahamongkol had dragged on for two years. It started when Jaa claimed he hadn’t renewed his existing 10-year contract with the studio. The studio said the renewal was automatic.
Lacking a comeback, Jaa disappeared and stayed gone for weeks. No one in the industry knew where he was until news emerged that he’d begun filming “Furious 7” in Los Angeles.
Soon after he was touted to appear in the Hong Kong production “SPL 2”, directed by Cheang Pou-soi, and another cross-border effort, “Skin Trade”, produced by Jaa’s new manager, Michael Selby, and also designed to get Hollywood’s attention.
Just days before the completed “Furious 7” was to open in Thailand, Sahamongkol ambushed Jaa’s big “inter” debut by slapping an injunction on its release here. Distributor UIP managed to get the injunction lifted in time, but Jaa still faced a lawsuit for having walked off “Ai Noom Gangnam” (“A Man Will Rise”), which he was also directing. That movie still hasn’t been finished, and the studio didn’t want to be left holding the bag on a Bt26-million-plus investment, which included the salaries for Jaa and co-star Dolph Lundgren.
A year later Jaa and Lundgren made “Skin Trade” together, here in Thailand, with a budget estimated at Bt320 million, but it earned only a few million of that back at the box office here and was virtually ignored in North America. Selby’s company yanked it out of theatres, citing a copyright problem rather than poor performance, and took aim instead at the video-on-demand route.
