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In the western comedy, scheduled to begin shooting in Calgary this summer, Chan will play a Chinese man who travels to the Wild West to rescue a kidnapped Asian princess.
Chan has asked his friend Sammo Hung to join the cast of Shanghai Noon. Hung, the star of TV's Martial Law, would play Chan's martial arts mentor, which is not that much of a stretch for either man.
When he was eight, Chan was apprenticed to the Yu Jim-Yuen Drama Academy for 10 years.
"My father had received a lucrative offer to become a chef at the American Embassy in Australia," says Chan.
"The ambassador would only pay for my father to go to Australia. My mother stayed on working in the laundry at an embassy in Hong Kong until my father could afford to send for her.
"My parents had no choice but to apprentice me to the Yu Jim-Yuen school. They were making certain I had some kind of future."
It was a school of hard-knocks in every sense of the word and the tiny Chan found a protector and mentor in Hung, who he still calls Big Brother.
Hung and Chan have appeared together in numerous Hong Kong films and have been trying to link up in an American project.
The success of Chan's Rush Hour movie has prevented him from appearing on Martial Law, so the friends are trying to reunite in Calgary in Shanghai Noon.