Jason Statham, the action star of movies including “Furious 7,” will play the lead in a project backed by China’s Road Pictures, in the latest example of how the country’s filmmakers are reaching out to a global audience.
Statham will play a British expatriate in Hong Kong, on the run with a female Chinese agent, the producers said Friday in a statement. The untitled movie is written by Kurt Wimmer, whose credits include “Total Recall” and “Point Break.”
Road Pictures, based in Beijing, is among a growing number of Chinese filmmakers forging collaborations in Hollywood to expand beyond their local market, which is forecast to become the world’s biggest by 2020. That’s positioning firms in the country to take on projects aimed at a global audience in a business now dominated by U.S. studios.
“The story is going to be a very global film,” Gongming Cai, founder of Road Pictures, said in an interview. “Jason wants to make a big film for a Chinese audience. He is very very popular in China.”
Road Pictures will also make productions for the Chinese market, and is working on an English-language TV series for the U.S. market that is based on a Chinese classic, Cai said. “Our main focus is learning from Hollywood.”
The past year has seen some of China’s biggest media companies, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Huayi Brothers Media Corp., invest in U.S. films. This past summer Alibaba invested in Paramount Pictures’ “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.” On Wednesday, Beijing-based Bona Film Group Ltd. announced it was investing $235 million in a slate of six films from 20th Century Fox.
Matt Damon, fresh from his hit film “The Martian,” will next year feature in “The Great Wall,” a Legendary East film about China’s snaking barrier. It is directed by Yimou Zhang, whose credits include the Oscar nominated “House of Flying Daggers.” Bruce Willis will be featured next year in a Chinese-language World War II feature “The Bombing.”
The Statham picture begins shooting next year in China and in Europe.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-06/statham-action-film-marks-china-s-latest-venture-with-hollywood
