The Lihpao Racing Park will be launched in November, while the film “Nezha” also held the press conference on October 22 to announce the heavyweight cast list. Those on the cast list such as Hannah Quinlivan, Tsao Yu-Ning, Van Fan, Alan Ko, Ken and Kao Ying-Hsuan all showed up at the shooting site at Lihpao Racing Park in Taichung to liven up the site yet to be launched.
The new site is designed by the “Nezha” crew with distinctive decorations to display the representative visualization of each car team in the film, revealing the high professional quality in “racing.” The main scene in the film took place in Lihpao Racing Park in Taichung and the “Nezha” crew thanked Lihpao for fully supporting them to film in the racing park which has not officially opened yet.
Lihpao Racing Park General manager Chu Kang-chen stated, “the public can understand motorsport by film promotion. Lihpao Resort upheld the mission of promoting motorsport and road safety when developing the racing park. Also, the world can notice Taiwan again by this film collaboration, which is a win-win situation.”
Located in Houli District, Taichung City, Taiwan, Lihpao Racing Park has three tracks in which the Lihpao Full Track with length of 3.5 km including 23 curves and design imitating mountain passes is the only track in Taiwan with a height difference. The debut of the Racing Park was expected to be in November and this press conference held by the “Nezha” crew was a warm-up for the coming debut event.
Will Liu and Peng Hsiao-tao participated in the conference as the producers and expressed their confidence in this film, “We are the Asian version of ‘The Fast And The Furious.’ Currently, we still have one month for shooting and the cost has reached NTD160 million. The amount keeps rising every day and we do not know what will happen next,” said Peng Hsiao-tao. Will Liu also mentioned that “The terrible thing of shooting a racing scene is that you cannot estimate the crashing. We had car crashes every day, so we hired a team specialized in maintenance standing by to repair one by one. Though the expense was shocking, we still support the director with full strength.” As a professional rider, the director Chen I-hsien described “Nezha” as “a crazy film that has had at least 30 car crashes since the shooting began. You may notice how much we cared about the details just by observing the design of the on-site scene. We put great effort in designing the visualization of each team and racing system and also received a lot of assistance from the racing cycle.”
Director Chen I-hsien revealed that Hannah often stepped on the accelerator to round the curve at high speed, “She drove at speed of 220–230 km/h.” Hannah also shared her feeling about her first racing experience with a hoarse sound due to the cold resulting from tiredness, “The director has inspired my passion for racing! But a scene made my claustrophobia break out yesterday (21st). I almost threw up in the confined space when wearing the headgear and helmet with the seatbelt fastened.” The director explained, “We let Hannah drive to go around in a circle and she felt better later on.” Hannah said it felt good to conquer claustrophobia.
When asked whether Jay Chou cared about the shooting condition of his wife Hannah, the director replied: “I promised Jay to prevent Hannah from dangerous action, so we hired a stunt performer and double to complete some stunts with high difficulty. There was a stunt performer who fractured the right hand bone due to a collision in a highly difficult racing scene but said nothing to us.” The director also mentioned that Jay forbade Hannah shooting a kissing scene but he also said with a dubious smile, “but we might not obey his words.”
“Nezha” invested a hundred million dollars in vehicle, track, scene, equipment and materials for professional racing and recruited top film talents in the industry and professional racing team. It is the first Asian film that has in-depth descriptions of professional racing. The shooting takes place in Lihpao Racing Park and is expected to be released in 2019.
