Hollywood Monster says, "Meeee! Tasty!"

I don't even know what to make of this bit from the New York Times' article on the burgeoning Chinese film industry:

Walt Disney Pictures may even spend part of its legacy, with a plan for what some people involved say is a live-action martial-arts remake of "Snow White" that would be shot in China and replace the dwarves with Shaolin monks. The director is expected to be Yuen Woo-Ping, the Chinese director and choreographer who arranged the fight scenes for Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" series, as well as "Kung Fu Hustle" and the "Matrix" movies.

On one hand, Woo-Ping finally getting to direct an American film is great. Every sequence he's put his hands on in recent years has been action gold; he's undoubtedly the best thing to happen to action filmmaking in years.

But this also sounds like it has the potential to wade into some hideously dorky territory, with comic relief monks engaging in kung-fuized circus clown antics. One of the best qualities of Woo-Ping's recent American work is that it takes itself seriously while retaining a sense of playfulness. And with this being his U.S. directorial debut, he'll be at the mercy of the studio overloads, who, as we know, have shown no mercy towards up and coming directors in the past.

And really - does this need the cushion of being a remake to get funding? It seems like, more than ever, it's impossible to get financing for a film that isn't an adaptation, sequel or remake. Of the "event" films this summer, only Mr. and Mrs. Smith and The Island didn't fit those categories, and they were both sold on the virtues of the big names attached - Pitt and Jolie to Smith and Michael Bay to The Island. Hollywood has long been cannibalizing itself, but at this stage, it seems as if it's lost any additional source of nourishment it had outside its own past.