After interviewing nearly 300 extras, Yee, who wrote and directed the film, found a clear thread.

"Sometimes I really think I could be a features journalist, as my habit to prepare a new movie is to interview a lot of relevant people to get close to reality," says Yee, who previously spent eight years researching drug-smuggling for Protege.

He extracted the most dramatic stories from the interviews and turned them into the plot.

Yee, who has been in the industry for 40 years, then found for the first time that he had a new job－teaching acting skills to his cast members.

"Most of the young actors have limited education. Some even failed to finish their primary school," says Yee.

One scene called for an argument between several actors, but they turned it into a real fight.

The other big challenge was to persuade investors. It was difficult to find a major film studio to show interest in a project with many scenes featuring bombing, gun battles and ancient life, without a single A-list actor or actress to play the lead roles. I Am Somebody has stories of a palace conspiracy, World War II and other themes.

Chinese kung fu star Jackie Chan had reportedly tried to persuade Yee to give up on the idea of self-financing the movie, but the director finally managed to do so.

"It will be definitely a blockbuster. No worries," Yu Dong, CEO of Bona Film Group, the movie's distributor, recently told reporters at a media event.

Yee jokes that he would have no choice but to "sell the rest of his life" to major film studios, if his latest movie suffers a big box-office loss.

I Am Somebody will be released on July 3.