(July 28, 2003)  BULLETPROOF MONK OUT ON DVD SEPTEMBER 9 According to online retailers such as Amazon.com, Bulletproof Monk will be released for sale on home video & DVD formats on September 9.  The movie, which was released theatrically on May 16, will include the anamorphic widescreen version of the movie.  Other special features include two separate audio commentaries: one by director Paul Hunter and producers Charles Roven and Douglas Segal, and the other by the writers; several deleted scenes, an alternate ending, and a series of behind-the-scenes featurettes.

(April 22, 2003)  BULLETPROOF MONK OPENING WEEKEND | POSTERS FOR SALE
Paul Hunter's film directorial debut, Bulletproof Monk, premiered mid-last week to generally negative reviews (both by critics and fans alike).  The movie, which opened last Wednesday, came in fourth in the box-office tallies this past Easter weekend, behind the movies Anger Management, Holes, & Malibu's Most Wanted.  The movie managed to make only $8.65million the first weekend, a total of $11.75million from Wednesday-Sunday; as compared to Anger Management's $25.01million in its 2nd weekend of release.  With such a weak start, and with much-anticipated movies X-Men2 & The Matrix: Reloaded coming out in the next few weeks, BPM is expected to, if anything, barely make up its reported $55million budget.  To read reviews of the movie, go to rottentomatoes.com.

For fans of the movie, the official Bulletproof Monk website has posted that official posters for the movie are available for sale at participating Mediaplay & Suncoast stores across the U.S.

(April 11, 2003)  ARTICLE AT CANOE.CA
Canadian site Canoe.ca has posted a behind-the-scenes article for Bulletproof Monk, which reveals information on the production of the movie in Toronto during Spring 2002.  The movie opens across North America tomorrow.
click here to read "Martial Parts" at Canoe.ca

(April 11, 2003)  WORLD PREMIERE IN LOS ANGELES
Bulletproof Monk made its world premiere in Los Angeles this past Wednesday, showing at the world-famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre.  Along with director Paul Hunter and stars Seann William Scott and Jaime King, other celebrities who attended the premiere included Peter Berg, The Rock, Sigourney Weaver, Selma Blair, and rapper Eve.  The star of the movie, Chow Yun-Fat, decided not to fly to Los Angeles (from his hometown of Hong Kong) to attend the premiere, due to the recent SARS threat (with strict warnings and restrictions for travelers to and from that area of Asia).  Other celebrities who attended the event included artists who have worked Paul Hunter in the past, including  rappers Will Smith and LL Cool J.  The North American premiere of Bulletproof Monk draws closer and closer, wiith less than a week until April 16.  It will premiere on Wednesday (instead of the typical Friday premiere) to get a head start on the big Easter Weekend business.
click here to visit Yahoo! News to search for photos from the L.A. premiere

Bulletproof Monk World Premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles (April 9, 2003)
(L-R) stars Marcus J. Pirae, Jaime King, Seann William Scott; director Paul Hunter, Will Smith

(April 7, 2003)  MOVIE CLIP ONLINE | MOVIE SOUNDTRACK & BOOK | SEANN WILLIAM SCOTT ON TV
Yahoo! Movies has posted a special feature for Bulletproof Monk, and included an exclusive clip from the movie featuring a mini-action sequence between Kar (Seann William Scott) and the Monk (Chow Yun-Fat).
click here to visit the Yahoo! Movies: Bulletproof Monk feature

The Bulletproof Monk soundtrack CD is being released nation-wide tomorrow (April 8) by Lakeshore Records.  There are a total of 33 tracks listed on the CD, all of which are the original score (background music) from the movie.  Search for the CD at Amazon.com for a complete tracklisting of the album.  The novel adaptation of the movie (published by Pocketbooks) was recently released (according to Amazon.com).  The novel was written by J. M. Dillard, is 288 pages long, and carries a suggested list-price of $6.99.

The official Bulletproofmonk.com website has posted a tentative schedule of appearances that Seann William Scott will make in the next few weeks to promote the movie.  No mention whether the movie's other 2 stars, Chow Yun-Fat and Jamie King, will be making the talk-show rounds as well.

Seann William Scott TV schedule (posted on bulletproofmonk.com):
(April 9) - Jay Leno
(April 11) - MTV Diary & Conan O'Brian
(April 14) - online chat @ MSN, 5pm PST
(April 15) - CBS Early Show; MTV Total Request Live
(April 16) - Howard Stern
(April 17) - Jimmy Kimmel Live
(April 22) - Carson Daly

(March 31, 2003)  OFFICIAL SITE UPDATED | PROMOTING THE MOVIE | COMIC BOOK | DVD RELEASE IN CHINA?
Just 2 1/2 weeks until Bulletproof Monk is released into North American theatres (on February 16, 2003).  The official bulletproofmonk.com website was updated last week, filling in some gaps that were previously listed as "coming soon", including the Production section (which includes a background of the movie including info on the original comic book, the movie studio & producers' process of developing the project, and selecting Paul Hunter as the director); and the Cast & Crew section which includes a brief bio on Paul Hunter (which is basically the same stuff that's mentioned at the HSI Productions website).

Promotion for the movie has already begun in the media.  Along with the teaser & official trailers appearing in North American movie theatres in the past few months, television commercials have also begun airing on network television, and online "banners" have appeared on sites such as DarkHorizons.com.  The Los Angeles premiere is scheduled for April 9 and the movie officially opens across North America on February 16.

Image Comics has released a new Bulletproof Monk comic book this past week to coincide with the movie's release.  The comic book, Tales of the Bulletproof Monk is an anthology comic featuring various stories of Kar and other Bulletproof Monks through history.  The comic books feature art by Tim Sale, Dave Johnson and Mike Oeming (the artist of the original Bulletproof Monk comics).  One of the stories is written by the film's screenwriters, Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris.  The comic book also features an intro by Michael Yanover & Mark Paniccia (who both wrote one of the stories "The Tibetan Tale), an intro about another one of the stories "The Tokyo Tale" (written by the movie's screenwriters Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris), an essay on the film by Producer Charles Roven, and essay on "Being the Bulletproof Monk" by actor Seann William Scott ("Kar").  In related news, screenwriters Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris were interviewed by SCREENTALK magazine (March/April 2003 issue; p.14-17) about their involvement with Bulletproof Monk, and the interview was posted on the official screentalk.biz website.  The interview discusses each of the writers' histories in the industry, the process of writing the script for Bulletproof Monk, how they tackeld the challenge of adapting a comic book to live-action movie, and even discusses some plot details from the movie.  The site includes html & Adobe Acrobat versions of the interview.  If you download and view the Acrobat version of the interview (taken straight from the print copy of the magazine), you will see 4 images from the movie on the page, one of which is a never-before-seen shot of Kar (Seann William Scott) and Bad Girl (Jaime King) from the movie.  Click here to read their exclusive interview.
(thanks to cv for the info)

Issue No.1 of the new Tales of the Bulletproof Monk comic has 2 covers;
one on the front, one on the back

A few weeks ago, MonkeyPeaches.com had posted an interesting tidbit on a Chinese video distributor's plans on releasing Bulletproof Monk on VCD and DVD in China on April 18, a mere 2 days after the North American theatrical release.  The movie is expected to be released to Asian theatres around the same time.  The unconfirmed report also states that one of the reasons for this simultaneous release of the movie to theatres and home media was to fight piracy in that area.  A few months ago, bootlegged versions of the movie were distributed across Asia.  These copies were shot during a test screening held in the U.S., but the quality of the video was inferior, and chunks of the movie's beginning and ending were missing, as were come computer effects and audio.

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