HONG KONG - Several wire services are touting it as "the first 3D porn movie," a fact that longtime AVN readers know is untrue, but Hong Kong-based One Dollar Productions' chairman Stephen Shiu Jr. has started pre-production on a 3-D sequel to his father's sexy 1991 blockbuster Sex And Zen.
3D Sex And Zen is billed as "a tale of how excess can lead to tragedy," perhaps in an effort to sidestep the Chinese government's recent crackdown on adult content. Budgeted at roughly $3.9 million, the movie will feature effects by Menford Electronic Art, the same group that worked on Hollywood productions such as the animated The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D.
According to Australia's Sunday Morning Post, Shiu is having trouble finding a male lead who would be willing to undress in front of the camera, though apparently finding actresses who are okay with nudity hasn't been nearly as great a problem.
The plot of 3D Sex And Zen will apparently be an update of the 1991 film, itself a modern retelling of the 17th century Chinese novel "The Carnal Prayer Mat." It involves a horny student who challenges his teacher's claim that spiritual enlightenment (Zen) transcends more human activities like sex, but after the student has a "disastrous yet humorous wedding night," he meets a thief who teaches him how to sneak into other people's houses undetected so he can sleep with their wives, but eventually, his nighttime activities so deplete him, he has to return to his teacher to ask forgiveness.
Several articles have attributed Shiu's decision to go ahead with the 3-D production to the success of the nude scene in the recently-released horror thriller My Bloody Valentine 3-D.
"The 3D erotica will probably be the world's first," Shiu said. "Just imagine that you'll be watching it as if you were sitting beside the bed."
But there's an equally good technological reason to give 3-D a try: It can't yet be pirated by sneaking a video camera into a theater and videotaping what's on the screen.
3-D porn in fact has a long history, beginning with Francis Ford Coppola's 1962 The Playgirls and the Bellboy, though the most popular early title was The Stewardesses , due to be released tomorrow on DVD in 3-D.
The Vidmax Company released nearly two dozen hardcore 3D videos in the late '90s, with the latest adult effort being Tommy Gunn's Cummin' At You Interactive 3D , due for a March release by PurePlay Media.
