His last film, Kill Bill, bravely incorporated Japanese, Chinese and Spanish dialogue into a mainstream Hollywood movie, but U.S. director Quentin Tarantino’s next project promises to dispense with the English language altogether. It will be shot entirely in Mandarin, he claims, and it will be another kung-fu film.

    The announcement comes as a surprise, as it was widely believed that the director was preparing his long-delayed war movie, Inglorious Bastards, having finally completed the two-part Kill Bill last year. But according to an interview in Total Film magazine, that is no longer the case.

    Like Kill Bill, Inglorious Bastards is “ballooning,” said Tarantino, and could again be split into two movies. “Before, I want to do something much smaller.”

    And in homage to the kung-fu films of the 1970s that so influenced Tarantino, the new film will also be available in a version with subtitles and an English-language version with old-school, out-of-sync dubbing.

    The idea of making another martial arts movie came to Tarantino after seeing Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers at the Cannes film festival this year. Like Tarantino, Zhang had to learn the skills of Chinese action directing from scratch for his movie Hero.

    “He’s spent a year and a half learning to make that kind of martial arts movie,” said Tarantino. “So what does he want to do Make another one. That just made sense to me.”

    Tarantino spent many months shooting Kill Bill’s kung-fu scenes at China’s Beijing Film Studio, working with a predominantly Chinese cast and crew, many of whom he will be hiring again.

    “He had a really good time shooting Kill Bill there,” his publicity agent, Bumble Ward, said. “And I don’t think he’s fully exercised that muscle.”

    China has another persuasive advantage: extremely low costs. Kill Bill cost approximately US$60 million to shoot, a fraction of what it would have cost had it been shot entirely in the United States.

    Worldwide, the two films generated more than US$330m at the box office. Another quick, cheap martial arts film under the Tarantino brand name could be even more profitable.

    Tarantino is currently writing the movie, which he will spend five months shooting in about a year’s time.