Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
2000 film by Ang Lee
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a 2000 wuxia film directed by Ang Lee and written for the screen by Wang Hui-ling, James Schamus, and Tsai Kuo-jung. It is based on the Chinese novel of the same name, serialized between 1941 and 1942 by Wang Dulu, the fourth part of his Crane-Iron Series. It stars Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen and Cheng Pei-pei in the leading roles. Set in 18th-century Imperial China, the plot follows two master warriors, Li Mu Bai (Chow) and Yu Shu Lien (Yeoh), who are faced with their greatest challenge when the treasured Green Destiny sword is stolen by the mysterious thief Jen Yu (Zhang).
The three producers credited with launching the project include Bill Kong, L.K. Hsu and Ang Lee. They represent two local companies, Edko Films Ltd (Hong Kong) and Zoom Hunt International Production Co Ltd (Taiwan). A multinational venture, the film was made with a budget of US$17 million, and was produced by Edko Films and Zoom Hunt Productions in collaboration with China Film Co-productions Corporation and Asian Union Film & Entertainment for Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia in association with Good Machine International. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2000, and was theatrically released in the United States on 8 December. With dialogue in Standard Chinese, subtitled for various markets, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became a surprise international success, grossing $213.5 million worldwide. It grossed US$128 million in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing foreign produced film in American history.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is 2000 film by Ang Lee. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Crouching, Tiger and Hidden, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “2000 film by Ang Lee” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q273978. VIAF identifies the subject as 316751974. The Library of Congress control number is no2001023920. 40 of 41 selected statements include explicit references; 40 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 1941 and 1942.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.