The Crossing (started 2008 under the working title of 1949, released 2014)
Woo had announced at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 that he would direct a wartime romance movie called 1949[1][2]
The film, budgeted at $40 million USD and written by Wang Hui-ling, was meant to be set during the Chinese Civil War's last years[3]
However, in April 2009, producer Terence Chang said that production on 1949 was cancelled due to a legal dispute over the rights to the script; Chang claimed that the film's Taiwanese investors had sold the script to a television channel[4][5]
In December 2011, it was announced that production on the film would resume under the new working title of Love and Let Love[6][7]
Production was halted shortly thereafter, as Woo quietly underwent treatment for a medical issue;[8] the project resumed in 2013,[9][10] with shooting beginning in July of that year[11]
The production now had a script credited to Woo, Taiwanese screenwriter Su Chao-pin (蘇照彬), and Chen Ching-hui (陳靜慧)[12]
This script had difficulties passing the Chinese censors[13]
It was ultimately released in two parts under the name The Crossing (2014)[14]
The second part fared significantly worse, earning $8.07 million in total[21]
Maggie Lee of Variety stated that part two "features no intriguing new turns and has nothing meaningful to say", declaring that Woo would have fared better re-editing the movie into one single film[22]
James Marsh of the South China Morning Post lambasted Woo's decision to spend an hour summarising the first film, and said that the bloated setup made it difficult to care which characters survive[23]
He further went on to bemoan Woo's current creative output, stating that the film's ending will cause audiences to feel "resigned acceptance that Hong Kong cinema has lost one of its truly great directors."
