MACAU, Dec 12 — The much-anticipated film on Bruce Lee’s early life, Little Dragon, is still a work in progress, said director Shekhar Kapur.

The Indian filmmaker said they had to pull back on shooting the film because they needed to work on the script further.

“We realised the script wasn’t ready, it’s not the script that we wanted for the film so we had to pull back for now,” he said in a brief interview session at the International Film Festival and Awards Macau (IFFAM) 2017.

Shekhar, who gained international recognition with Bandit Queen and Elizabeth, said it was a huge responsibility for him to direct a film on Bruce Lee especially with his daughter, Shannon Lee, as the producer.

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“I didn’t realise it’s going to be that big. Fans all around the world are excited waiting for it,” he said.

He felt that perhaps a Chinese director should be directing the film on the martial arts legend while he produces it instead.

On why he chose to direct Little Dragon, Shekhar said it was because of his fascination with Bruce Lee as a philosopher.

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“He was considered to be the greatest exponent in martial arts but now, he’s accepted as a philosopher. If you look in any book on philosophy, there would be his sayings such as ‘be like water’,” he said.

He said Lee practised his philosophies during his lifetime and this was the most interesting part about the martial arts master.

“Bruce Lee as a philosopher was more interesting to me,” he added.

Shannon Lee together with co-producer Tim Kwok announced in August that Little Dragon will be filmed in part in Penang and Pinewood Iskandar Studios in Johor, both in Malaysia and Guangzhou, China.

The movie — to be produced by Bruce Lee Entertainment, which is part of the Bruce Lee Family Company — is on the origins of Bruce Lee and the influences in his life that put him on the path he was on.

Bruce Lee, known as the master of kung fu, was born in San Francisco, United States but he grew up in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Lee died at 32 on July 20, 1973.

Shekhar is attending IFFAM for the second time this year, this time as an ambassador and a curator in the Crossfire section of the film festival.

Last year, he was the head jury of IFFAM and the filmmaker expressed his continuous support for the festival even for next year.

Shekhar presented Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in Crossfire due to his “lifetime” fascination with the film since he first saw it as a child.

“When I first saw the film as a child, I didn’t understand it and I saw it again here and I still don’t understand what he (Kubrick) was thinking,” he explained.

He said the film was compelling to him as a child and it led to a lifetime of him trying to understand it.

“This is what is so brilliant about it; it left spaces for your imagination for what it could mean,” he said.

Shekhar firmly believes that the best scripts for any film are the ones that leave a lot of room for interpretation.

“It is the spaces that the film doesn’t explore and it is where your imagination is born within these spaces, how you imagine it during different times in your life,” he said.

The second IFFAM opened on December 8. It is an international competition to showcase work by first and second time filmmakers.

IFFAM is a ten-film competition with eight jury prizes and seven other additional prizes that included then Macao Audience Choice Award, International Star of the Year and Asian Blockbuster Film 2017.

The winners will be announced in the awards ceremony on December 14.