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Posted in: Games, Movies, News, Square Enix | Tagged: Sleeping Dogs
The Sleeping Dogs Film Has Finally Found A Director
The big screen adaptation of the 2012 Square Enix game Sleeping Dogs is one step closer to becoming a reality, with a new director officially confirmed.
Article Summary
- Simu Liu confirms Timo Tjahjanto as director for the upcoming Sleeping Dogs film adaptation.
- Sleeping Dogs has spent eight years in development hell since first being announced in 2017.
- The movie will star and be produced by Simu Liu, with a script written by Tze Chun reportedly completed.
- The film’s development updates have been revealed mainly through Simu Liu’s social media accounts.
It seems that Simu Liu is continuing the ongoing pattern of releasing any and all information about the Sleeping Dogs adaptation that he is working on via his social media. It's not the normal way we go about things, but considering how long this movie has been hanging out in development hell [roughly eight years], maybe some modernity is needed. In a cheeky little exchange involving a gif, Liu confirmed that Indonesian director Timo Tjahjanto is the director for the big screen adaptation of the 2012 Square Enix game.
"i could tell you the news or my friend @Timobros can…." Liu tweeted to a fan asking for updates. "We'll cross the oceans of time to make this," Tjahjanto replied with a gif. "ladies and gents, the director of sleeping dogs," Liu confirmed, so no one can be vague about it. At the time of writing, we have no updates about a release date or who will be distributing the film.
Sleeping Dogs Is No Longer Sleeping In Development Hell
Maybe it would be easier to find video game adaptations where everything goes smoothly because "video game adaptation spends [x] years in development hell" is becoming an all too common story. However, here we are yet again. Sleeping Dogs is a Square Enix game released in 2012. Like many games with massive budgets, despite strong reviews from critics and fans, the sales figures did not meet the threshold for "success" according to Square Enix's standards. So, no one should be surprised that the sequel and the spin-off film were canceled. However, several years later, in 2017, word came down about a film adaptation.
They even managed to get Donnie Yen to star before he really broke out to Western audiences. The project appeared to stall, and we didn't hear anything about it until the beginning of this year, when Yen confirmed that the project was dead. However, Simu Liu, who had recently broken onto the scene in a big way thanks to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, jumped on social media and confirmed he was working on the film next.
Sleeping Dogs has emerged from development hell into a world where video game adaptations are no longer frowned upon and production schedules can move at lightning speed. Liu would star and produce. By October 2025, Liu confirmed that the script by Tze Chun was complete via a deleted Instagram post, and at the end of 2025, he confirmed that Timo Tjahjanto, who had directed Nobody the previous summer, would be directing. The fact that most of these big announcements are being made via Liu's social media shows what a different world Sleeping Dogs has awoken to.
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