New stills from The Green Hornet fly in

The tribulations of The Green Hornet's production have been well documented, and the movie's star, Seth Rogen, has been surprisingly open about its ongoing battle to reach the screen. At last weekend's Comic-Con, Rogen even joked about the fact that he was nearly taken off the picture.

"I think I wasn't in the movie for a few weeks," Rogen said, before explaining: "Every possible obstacle came in our way at one point or another, to the point that it really just got ridiculous, but we kept saying we really love the movie, we really believe in the idea, this is our chance to do something like this, and we just got to keep trying to charge it forward."

The Green Hornet has survived into post-production, despite the departure of original director Stephen Chow, who was hastily replaced by cinema maverick Michel Gondry. Most recently, meanwhile, its release date was pushed back to next January to allow time for its somewhat worrying conversion into after-the-fact-3D.

The newly released action stills pictured here depict Seth Rogen in full combat mode as the Green Hornet himself, and a perplexed-looking Jay Chou as his sidekick Kato. It's hard not to look at them without wondering how badly the film's numerous behind-the-scenes calamities will affect what we see onscreen , particularly in light of the somewhat muted fan response to the movie at Comic-Con.

The Green Hornet is due for release on 14 January 2011 in the US.

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