Famed Chinese director Chen Kaige (
The Web movie, produced by Internet prankster Hu Ge and titled A Murder Sparked by a Chinese Bun, expands on the movie's premise that one of its main characters turned evil because he was cheated out of a Chinese bun as a child.
``I think this is an approach that has lost the most basic moral bottom line,'' Chen said in an interview on the sidelines of the Berlin Film Festival, which appeared on the Chinese Web site www.sina.com earlier this week.
The Promise, a US$35 million production, is a mythology about an ordinary girl transformed into a princess by a goddess on the condition that she will never find true love. As a young girl, the princess cheats a future duke out of a bun. As an adult, the duke becomes one of her adversaries.
``I think this [parody] has exceeded the normal bounds of issuing commentary and opinion. It's an arbitrary alteration of someone else's intellectual property ... if [Hu Ge] made a movie, and people did this, how would he feel?'' Chen said.
The director said he has asked his lawyer to look into the parody, but did not explain what sort of legal action he is considering.
Stylish rocker Lenny Kravitz is to make his movie debut as a musician who falls into the abyss of crack addiction, Production Weekly reported this week.
The movie, named Iced, is currently in pre-production and is based on a novel by Ray Shell that follows the rocker's downfall from a promising start in his 20s to a descent into drugs in his 30s.
The project is the second film to be directed by Lee Daniels, who also helmed last year's Shadow-boxer with Helen Mirren.
Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin will shoot a movie in China about a joint Sino-US operation to arrest a Japanese war criminal after World War II and a subsequent treasure hunt, a news report said.
The movie, titled The Forbidden City, is a US$12 million joint production China's official Xinhua News Agency reported this week.
Directed by Russian Andrei Konchalovsky, the report said the movie was adapted from the novel The Last Mandarin by Stephen Becker.
It is scheduled to be released next year, it said.
Adam Sandler is to star in a gay marriage movie about two heterosexual firemen who pretend to be a couple to gain domestic partner benefits, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The Universal Studios movie will be called I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and will co-star Kevin James (Hitch) as Sandler's partner.
David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) will direct from a script by Oscar winners Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (Sideways).
US network NBC has bought the format rights to the Eurovision Song Contest in a bid to challenge the hit show American Idol by rival Fox.
The idea is for competitors to apply from all the US states with with a roster of acts competing in a grand final in which the voting public will have a say.
An online competition will be held to find singers from each US state to go forward to the grand final, with the winner landing a recording contract.
American Idol is the most popular show on US television, attracting 28 million viewers last week -- compared to 15 million for the prestigious Grammy music industry award gala.
The Eurovision contest has been running for 50 years and helped to launch the careers of Swedish pop group Abba and Canadian singer Celine Dion, both of whom were winners.
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