It would be animated, for sure.
Yes, yes, I know. The book is being printed as I write this, but the narcissist in me couldn’t help but think about what the movie would be like. While I was writing the book, I often imagined a world that was created by a combination of a Chinese paintbrush and watercolours, plus, I specifically asked for a watercolour artist to draw the cover. (Her name is Hwei Lim and she can be found here.)
The universe that Dragonhearted is in is too fantastical to be contained in a live action movie, and I would love for it to be animated in that kind of painterly manner. There are a lot of imaginative elements in it (at least, I think so, anyway), and it would be hard to capture the spirit of the story if it were live action with a bunch of CG thrown in.
I would love it if Ming Na Wen to play the role of Shu Ping’s mother, and to have both Elizabeth Sung and Irene Tsu from Sleeping Dogs play Ah Ma and Madam Pu respectively. It’s better if I got Chinese actors to play the roles of Chinese people. If Filipino voice actresses can do the voices of the Crystal Gems in Steven Universe, I don’t see why we can’t find voices to create a completely Asian film of our own.