Kung Fu Soccer
功夫女足
China/Hong Kong, 2026, colour, 2.35:1, 105 mins.
Director: Zhou Xingchi 周星驰 [Stephen Chow].
Associate directors: Qin Pengfei 秦鹏飞, Lin Zicong 林子聪, Lu Zhengyu 卢正雨.
Rating: 8/10.
After a long absence, Zhou Xingchi [Stephen Chow] bounces back in form with a gender-switch riff on his 2001 hit Shaolin Soccer, anchored by terrific lead playing by Mainland actress Zhang Xiaofei.
STORY
Somewhere in East Asia, the present day. After a four-year break The Supreme and Invincible Cup 至尊无敌杯, an international tournament for women’s football, has returned. Among the 16 competing teams Team Emei, from mainland China, is an unknown newcomer. The average age of the players is 35, as its particular skills (“kung-fu meets soccer”) take a long time to develop. The team’s spiritual mentor, Grandmistress (Liu Jialing), is officially in seclusion but actually playing majiang witn old friends and watching everything on TV; its manager, Chen (Chen Min), is permanently hysterical; and its trainer, Guanghui (Qin Pengfei), is little more than a cook as all the training is supervised by the team’s manic captain, Shuangshuang (Zhang Xiaofei), who’s now almost 40, never stops working out, bullies the other players, and has been at war with her childhood friend and onetime BFF, Yulong (Dilraba Dilrumat), since the latter’s marriage broke up and she returned to the team she’d earlier walked away from. Grandmistress sends along an elite trainer to put the finishing touches on the team prior to the tournament. He turns out to be Xu Feng (Zhang Yixing), a onetime tubby childhood friend of Shuangshuang whom she used to bully but is now a slick-looking trainer (obsessed with combing his hair) who demands respect from her and the other women. In its first game, Team Emei plays the cocky, serious and very butch Team Golden Dragon and ends up destroying the latter, 22:0, with its super-powered kicking of the ball. Shuangshuang and Yulong immediately become media stars, after being treated condescendingly by reporters prior to the match. But off the field the two onetime BFFs continue to spat, with Shuangshuang always attacking Yulong for her laziness in training, luck in being an heiress, and now dating a man who’s only 18. Shuangshuang, for whom losing is not an option, continuously lectures the other players for not being dedicated enough. Though she never admist it to his face, the only person who can melt her heart is Xu Feng, now grown into a handsome man who seems to care for her. However, one day, following a misunderstanding that he tries to apologise for, she bawls him out, and also accuses him of romancing Yulong. Minutes before the next match, Shuangshuang and Yulong finally have a huge row and come to blows; but they make up just in time and resume their friendship. Thanks to their partnership on the field, Team Emei manages to beat the Indian Team Ganges, a formidable opponent, by 12:0. The third match is against Team Pear Blossom, from South Korea, which pretends to be very cute and feminine on the surface but is ruthless underneath. Shuangshuang loss her temper and gets a yellow card; she’s further angered by seeing Xu Feng on the Pear Blossom benches offering advice on Team Emei’s weaknesses. Yulong takes her place but also gets sent off; despite her injury, Shuangshuang goes back on, but Team Emei loses the match. Its fourth game is against Team Coral, an immensely powerful group of big women from Australia. Shuangshuang takes a gamble and fields all her reserves instead of her main players (including herself and Yulong); the youngsters win thanks to a high-flying kicker, Xueye (Xueye). In the semi-finals Team Emei is re-matched against Team Pear Blossom and again Shuangshuang fields her reserves. After eventually winning, Shuangshuang gets her revenge on Xu Feng for working for other teams against hers. But at the celebration dinner afterwards she suddenly realises everything has not been as it has appeared. In the final Team Emei is matched against Japan’s Team Grand River, the seven-times defending champion which has unimaginable powers. But Shuangshuang still has a couple of aces up her sleeve.
REVIEW
In his first directorial outing in seven years, Hong Kong’s Zhou Xingchi 周星驰 [Stephen Chow] bounces back in form with Kung Fu Soccer 功夫女足, a kind of gender-switch version of his earlier hit, Shaolin Soccer 少林足球 (2001), that trades on the recent popularity of women’s football. (The film’s Chinese title simply means “Kung Fu Women’s Football”). There’s nothing much new here for fans of Zhou’s work, but it boasts strong performances (led by standout Mainland actress Zhang Xiaofei 张小斐, who earns the film an extra point, plenty of comically o.t.t. visual effects, and Zhou’s usual trademarks of innocence mixed with cynicism and an often violent sense of humour. All of that makes it cream his last outing, The New King of Comedy 新喜剧之王 (2019), a love/hate letter to his chosen profession that was also a gender-switch version of a past hit (King of Comedy 喜剧之王, 1999) but marred by a rather nasty sense of humour that the public didn’t warm to.
Avoiding the Chinese New Year battleground, Kung Fu Soccer opened a month ago in the Mainland and has so far taken a very nice RMB2.27 billion (on a reported budget of around RMB380 million), occupying the year’s no. 2 spot behind Pegasus 3 飞驰人生3 (RMB4.42 billion) and just ahead of surprise hit Dear You 给阿嬷的情书 (RMB2 billion so far). It’s still some way behind Zhou’s biggest hit, Mermaid 美人鱼 (2016, RMB3.4 billion), but way ahead of the career dip of New King (RMB627 million). The film opens in Hong Kong tomorrow.
Like New King, this retread isn’t a sequel, instead wrapping a completely different plot around a similar idea – in this case, blending martial arts with (women’s) soccer. The whole film takes place during a single tournament, The Supreme and Invincibles Cup, which has returned after a four-year break. Sixteen teams are taking part – each representing a distinct ethnicity, though never openly stated – with seven-times defending champions Team Grand River (= Japan) back again and newcomers Team Emei (= China) the unknown quantity. The latter – whose tagline is “kung-fu meets soccer” – raises press interest as it has an average age of 35, explained by its confrontational captain Shuangshuang (Zhang), who’s almost 40, as because their skills take a long time to mature.
The team has a very camp manager who’s permanently hysterical, a trainer (co-writer/director/action choreographer Qin Pengfei 秦鹏飞) who’s really just a glorified cook, and a spiritual mentor (Liu Jialing 刘嘉玲 [Carina Lau]) who’s officially “in seclusion” but actually playing majiang with her pals. The team is basically run by Shuangshuang, who doesn’t tolerate fools easily, regularly bawls out her team, trains non-stop, and doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “lose”. When the team’s mentor sends along an elite (male) trainer, Xu Feng (Mainland actor-singer Zhang Yixing 张艺兴), to whip the team into top shape for its first international competition, sparks soon fly – especially as Xu Feng was once a fat kid that Shuangshuang used to make fun of. But Xu Feng, now a handsome guy with immaculately combed hair (a running joke), stands his ground – and Shuangshuang is kind of smitten. Other jealousies also play their part, especially between Shuangshuang and her deputy, childhood friend and heiress Yulong (notable Uyghur actress Dilraba Dilmurat 迪丽热巴, rarely seen of late on the big screen), and then Shuangshuang one day bawls out Xu Feng and he starts working for a rival team.
Despite his role in the plot, there’s almost nothing shown of Xu Feng training the team – which hardly seems to need it, anyway. The explosive and often very funny combo of martial arts and football is all reserved for the tournament sequences – six matches that punctuate the movie. Zhou uses the non-tournament scenes for developing the leading players’ stories: Shuangshuang and her fanatical work ethic, Yulong’s laid-back approach (returning to the team after a failed marriage) and lack of respect for Shuangshuang’s fear tactics, and both of their relationships with Xu Feng. There’s a growing sense of repetitiveness as one match succeeds another, and how Zhou will differentiate each; but structure has never been his forte as a director, and as usual he gets by with o.t.t comedy – the Australian team is very serious and heavily built, the South Korean team (all in pink) is cute on the outside but vicious on the inside, the Japanese team (all in black) is fanatically focused, and so on.
As in Mermaid, the VFX have a basic, unpolished look that is part of their comic appeal: players flying through the air, footballs as destructive as cannonballs, energy waves sweeping across the stadium, and animation used at a key point in the Final. Typically for Zhou, it’s all consciously cartoony – as, too, are several of the characters. One of the funniest is Team Emei’s blind masseuse who’s alwasy beating up the wrong person when she detects a threat to the players – a typical Zhou creation played brilliantly by Hong Kong TV actress Cai Sibei 蔡思贝 in a striking pair of shades. Other witty creations include a player who’s always apologising and crying (Hong Kong wushu competitor/surfer Hu Yu’an 胡予安), and an over-nervous reserve player (Mainland wrestler/martial artist Li Zhuomei 李卓媚).
Holding the whole thing together, however, is the lead performance of Liaoning-born Zhang Xiaofei, 40, a onetime dancer who finally broke out (mentored by comedienne/director Jia Ling 贾玲) as the lead in megahit Hi, Mom 你好，李焕英 (2021) and has gone on to show her range in Five Hundred Miles 交换人生 (2023), YOLO 热辣滚烫 (2024) and Malice 恶意 (2025). Her playing of the manic, self-centred Shuangshuang manages to walk a tightrope between the unlikeable and sympathetic, and her physical dexterity helps to make the character believable. She’s ably backed up by the softer playing of 34-year-old Dilrumat, with her rom-com experience (Mr Pride and Miss Prejudice 傲娇与偏见, 2016; Namiya 解忧杂货店, 2017; 21 Karat 21克拉, 2018), and by actor-singer Zhang Yixing (the lead in megahit No More Bets 孤注一掷, 2023, the deaf father in Mumu 不说话的爱, 2025) who shows new range as the preening male lead. Having huge fun on the sidelines is veteran actress Liu as the team’s majiang-playing “spiritual mentor”, speaking Cantonese throughout. Zhou himself cameos in the final shot (with his back to the camera) as Big Brother, a set-up for an already announced sequel.
Beyond the VFX, technical credits are fine, from the unshowy widescreen photography by new name Zhao Xiaofeng 赵晓峰 (Super Villain 大“反”派, 2024; Hot Pot Artist 火锅艺术家, 2025) to tight editing by Yang Qirong 杨启荣 (The New King of Comedy) that brings the whole thing in at a tight 100-or-so minutes. Music is functional, with Vivaldi used in the finale. The film was largely shot in Shenzhen, across from Hong Kong, in spring 2025. For the record, it marks the scriptwriting debut of Hong Kong’s He Yingxuan 何颖璇, 35, a professional magician/internet personality aka Miss Hunny, who gets a co-writing credit with Zhou. Nine other people get associate scriptwriting credits.
CREDITS
Presented by Shenzhen Film Studio (CN), The Star Overseas (HK), Shanghai Maoyan Pictures (CN), China Film Group (CN), Quak (HK), Shenzhen Lefeng Investment Management (CN), Avenir Investment Management (HK), Small AI (HK), Steam Rood HK (HK), Daxishi Films (Shanxi) (CN), Huayi Vision (Shenzhen) Film Industry (CN), Wondercat (Beijing) Animation (CN), Shenzhen D.Free Film Creative Culture (CN), Shenzhen Bahe Investment (CN), Beijing Gaoxing Culture Media (CN), Shenzhen Xiyue Jewelry (CN), Bingo Group Holdings (HK), Guangdong Yuannengliang Sports Developments (CN).
Script: Zhou Xingchi [Stephen Chow], He Yingxuan [Miss Hunny], Huang Yingkuang, Lin Zicong, Chen Wenqiang, Yin Zhiwen [Jimmy Wan], Huang Xiaopeng, Xu Yueming, Gao Yan, Xiao He, Feng Xuebing. Original script: Zhou Xingchi [Stephen Chow]. Photography: Zhao Xiaofeng. Editing: Yang Qirong. Music: Huang Yinghua [Raymond Wong Ying-wah], Huang Zhengzhong [Russell Wong Chung-jung]. Art direction: Chen Jinhe, Gao Zhuolin. Costume design: Bai Yiting [Bai Xipo], Bai Yike. Sound: Lin Shaoru, Ye Zhaoji. Action: Zhou Xingchi [Stephen Chow], Qin Pengfei, Liu Yaxi. Visual effects: Xiang Fei.
Cast: Zhang Xiaofei (Shuangshuang), Dilraba Dilmurat (Yulong/Jade), Zhang Yixing (Xu Feng), Liu Jialing [Carina Lau] (Grandmistress, Team Emei’s spiritual mentor), Satoh Takeru (Team Grand River trainer), Ai Mi (Chusan, reserve player), Xueye [Li Xueminghui] (Xueye/Snowy, reserve main striker), Cai Sibei (Maba/Double Eight, blind masseuse), Hu Yu’an (Sangbiao/Loony), Ni Hao (Sisi), Zhao Li’na (Zhao Li’na, championship chairwoman), Ouyang Jing (opening ceremony MC), Zhang Jicong (referee), Ouyang Wancheng (stadium official), Chen Min (Chen, Team Emei manager), Li Zhuomei (Hao’er, nervous reserve player), Qin Pengfei (Guanghui, Team Emei trainer/cook), Zhang Tianyi (Xiaoyan), Sun Ziqi (Yanshu), Hong Lei (Kaiqi), Shi Yufei, Jing Ruyang, Li Yizhen (Team Pear Blossom players), Lailai [Lai Jiatong] (Xiaofen), Ge Yixuan (Cuilian), Wang Yitong (Lu’na), Ma Xiyue (Yiru), Zou Xia (Guiyuan), Cui Tongyao (Guizhi), Zhang Di (Biyi), Zhang Qi (Qi, Grandmistress’ male majiang partner), Fang Yan (Team Pear Blossom’s trainer), Deng Yueping (Team Golden Dragon captain), Chanya McClory (Team Golden Dragon goalkeeper), Xu Juncong (Team Golden Dragon trainer), Menqiang [Zhang Bingjie] (Team Golden Dragon player), Feng Mianheng (Loony’s ex-boyfriend), Tang Xiangyu (reporter), Li Mingyuan (crew head), Miao Yilun (crew assistant head), E Jingwen (Team Golden Dragon player), Avantgardey (Japanese female dance group), Zhang Mei’e (Mei’e, Grandmistress’ female majiang partner), Nadi (Team Ganges goalkeeper), Feng Xi (reporter), Chen Muyang (child Shuangshuang), Xu Feng (Team Grand River assistant trainer), Zhao Lijing (Team Pear Blossom assistant trainer), Bai Yue [Fujimoto Luna] (Team Grand River captain), Li Yi’na (Team Pear Blossom goalkeeper), Yu Weini (teenage Shuangshuang), Liu Yaxi (Team Pear Blossom player no. 9; Team Grand River player no. 6), Zhou Xingchi [Stephen Chow] (Big Brother, man at end).
Release: Hong Kong, 13 Aug 2026; China, 11 Jul 2026.