IT WAS a cheeky question.

Would Hong Kong director Oxide Pang marry his actress-girlfriend Angelica Lee if The Storm Warriors becomes the biggest hit of 2009?

Oxide, 44, who has been dating the 33-year-old Malaysian beauty, whom he directed in The Eye (2002), for the past seven years, chuckled at the journalist’s question.

“Come on, I’m not betting my marriage on the film,” said Oxide, one-half of the Hong Kong directing duo known to cinema aficionados as the Pang Brothers.

The Storm Warriors, the highly-anticipated sequel to 1998’s Storm Riders, opens in cinemas here on 10 December.

Adapted from Hong Kong illustrator Ma Wing-Shing’s pugilistic comic series, Fung Wan, The Storm Warriors reunites leading men Ekin Cheng and Aaron Kwok in the roles of Whispering Wind and Striding Cloud respectively.

Oxide was in town on Monday with his younger twin, Danny (Oxide is the older of the two by 15 minutes), along with leading men Ekin and Aaron, to promote the film.

In love

While marriage is not yet on the cards for the director and his sweetheart, it wasn’t hard to see that the couple are still blissfully in love.

Oxide revealed that Angelica egged him to trim his hair.

Formerly sporting long floppy locks like his brother, he now looks spiffy with a short, spunky cut.

“She came up with this new style for me,” he said.

“Besides, Danny and I thought the latest contrast in our images is very fitting.

“As directors of The Storm Warriors, we need to get into the roles of the leading characters Whispering Wind and Striding Cloud too, so Danny, with his long hair, is Wind and I’m Cloud!”

No bets

Though the brothers are confident that the film will rival the success of Storm Riders, which made history then by becoming the first film to earn $20m in China, you won’t catch either of them doing anything wild if the follow-up rakes in the big bucks.

“We’re not going to take bets and do mad things like streaking, that’s for sure,” Danny said.

The Pang Brothers, whose most well-received works include The Eye and Thai horror thriller Omen (2003), take on a serious tone when it comes to their current baby.

Made with a budget of $18m, The Storm Warriors is the largest-scale film project they’ve helmed so far.

“A lot of people think Pang Brothers and immediately associate us with horror movies,” said Danny,

“Actually, our first movie (1999’s Thai crime actioner Bangkok Dangerous) is about assassins.

There wasn’t a single element of the supernatural in there.”

The success of Bangkok Dangerous spawned a Hollywood remake, which the brothers directed again and had Nicolas Cage playing the lead.

“We hope that with the release of The Storm Warriors, it’ll dawn on audiences that we can do other movie genres, not just horror,” Danny added.

The brothers are unabashed about devoting a large bulk of the film to CGI special effects.

Don’t be surprised if you find hints of Hollywood fantasy action films 300 and Watchmen in The Storm Warriors.

“Just like those movies, we shot at high speed for a lot of our action-packed sequences,” explained Danny.

“And we used the same high-definition cameras.”

This article was first published in The New Paper.