Director Kevin Chu was like the head coach leading out his Most Valuable Players (MVPs) to court, and explained that the idea for Kung Fu Dunk was actually established some 13 years back when filming martial arts movies such as Shaolin Popey (Shao Lin Xiao Zhi, starring Jimmy Lin), when he thought about whether martial arts could be combined with a ball game like basketball. Special effects and wire-work stunts were not as established back then, but that's not to say that filming the movie's many action sequences was a walk in the park.

In fact, it's a challenge to film the titular stunts, and one scene required as much as shooting it more than 150 times, just to get the 4 or 5 shots acceptable for about a 10 second screen time. And in repeatedly performing such retakes, Jay Chou had knocked against the backboard countless of times and suffered various bruises, but the professional had kept quiet about it and endured the pain so as to not disrupt the production schedule.

Dressed in a black jacket over a black T, Jay Chou was in a jovial mood, cracking jokes and seemed rather relaxed when fielding questions, particularly happy too about his role in Kung Fu Dunk. Like any casual basketball player, he too dreamt of being able to perform dunks on the court, and this movie was like having that dream fulfilled, even though it was with the assistance of the stunt team hoisting him up on wires, which also allowed the creative him to design some of his own dunk techniques, some involving nifty footwork starting from the 3 point line.

baron Chen, on the other hand, had never played basketball, and was tasked to undergo training, which he only did so intensively for a month before the shoot. In fact, in one of the friendly basketball games during breaks between shoots on set, baron got injured and suffered a cut at the bottom of his eye, which was just plastered over by hospital staff. Understandably, Kevin Chu had to ban all friendly games lest more of his cast members get injured.

The director though was full of praise of both his leading men in the acting department, promising that fans of Jay will get to see a different side of his screen persona aside from those in his earlier movies, and newcomer baron Chen, in his first cinematic outing, possibly took the "coolness" factor from Jay and made it his own. Kevin had researched the various dunking techniques of legendary basketball players, and is confident that this movie will be bench-marked against for future basketball films.

Watch our video coverage of the press conference here:

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Later that evening, the gala was held at the Suntec City Convention Hall 602 where the movie was screened to a 3000 strong audience. Prior to the event, the audience were treated to a demonstration of slam dunks by players from the Singapore Slingers, as well as a cheer-leading performance. When the stars and director took to the stage, they were all game to show off their basketball skills too! You can watch the proceedings from our video coverage of the event, and see first hand who has the better ball handling skills!

Kung Fu Dunk opens this Thursday at cinemas everywhere and is reviewed here.