Feng Xiaogang’s 'Ye Yan/The Night Banquet' ready to begin filming.

Pre-production has nearly concluded for The Night Banquet, Feng Xiaogang's [A World Without Thieves] period epic based on or inspired by William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Set in China's Tang Dynasty (618-907), Night Banquet will be a story of revenge by a member of the imperial family. Shooting will begin this month in the Altay Mountains of China’s northwestern Xinjiang Region.

In a MonkeyPeaches exclusive they cover some of the details of the sets desgined by production designer and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon alumni, Tim Yip, and they sound every bit as impressive as their predecessor, CTHD. We will revisit the famed 'Bamboo Sea' [is it really a period epic without a bamboo forest? I say 'Nay Nay'] from CTHD. Of the 20 sets designed by Yip the set for the 'Night Banquet' itself sounds very ambitious, reportedly [and I have assumed a spelling error here] a palace set the size of a football field. A set piece in the Altay Mountains is a stone wall with a 100-metre long bridge. It all sounds very ambitious and should be nice on the eyes when it comes to screens.