Tony Jaa, star of action movies Tom Yum Goong and Ong Bak, mysteriously disappeared for two months during the filming of the hotly anticipated sequel to Ong Bak.
Tony, a notorious perfectionist, apparently became disgruntled over problems with the budget and working conditions for the movie.
As filming neared competition, Tony vanished, leading to Sahamongkol, the film company behind the project, pleading with Tony to return, promising not to sue the actor for the 250 million baht in damages that he had caused. Tony reportedly turned his phone off and was unreachable, with about 20% of the movie left to shoot.
Bizarrely, Tony's father went on record suggesting that Tony may have been kidnapped.
After two months AWOL, Tony resurfaced and said that he had been chilling out and meditating in his home province of Surin. He also requested an extra 55 million baht and made a bunch of outrageous demands to finish the movie.
After saying he would disappear forever if his demands were unmet, Tony reportedly ended up in a police station saying he was being followed. A guy from Sahamongkol then showed up and the two sides resolved their differences.
Filming got back underway recently and the movie should be finished by the end of November. Whether any other production company will want to work with Tony Jaa in the future remains to be seen.
In other Tony Jaa news, the actor has reportedly landed a small part in the upcoming King Naresuan movie.
Some info from twitchfilm.net
Tony Jaa who?
There's a clue in this line: "Tony Jaa, star of action movies Tom Yum Goong and Ong Bak."
Why link to Twitch and not the two Thailand-based blogs that have been extensively covering the story?
looking forward to the ong bak sequel as the first one is ace! must have missed his spicey prawn soup adventure though!
Wise Kwai, I actually read about it in a newspaper last week. I got the link to Twitch through IMDB when searching for extra info. I'm not always aware of everyone else's blog posts and I haven't been following this that closely.
Wow. A newspaper. I didn't think anybody read those anymore.
Anyway, no worries Lost Boy. Twitch links back to the Thailand blogs anyhow. It's just interesting to see who's picking up on this, and where they are getting their information from.
I see now that you've been following this in some depth. Noted.
sad really. at first reading about tony in the early years he seemed so cool and real. now he is turning out to be a spoiled movie star. I skipped his last movie and will do with this one. no reason to support a rich spoiled brat imho.
so much for thinking he was different.