Chinese director Feng Xiaogang (馮小剛) will start shooting next month for his new movie, about a Chinese soldier who seeks honors for his fallen comrades, his assistant said.
The assistant said the film's Chinese title is Jijiehao but that the director hasn't decided on an English name.
He said it's budgeted at about US$10.1 million and that filming will mostly take place in China's northeast.
Zhang said the movie, adapted from a short story, is about a Chinese soldier who seeks recognition for his fallen comrades during the Chinese civil war between the communists, the eventual victors, and the Chinese Nationalist Party, which retreated to Taiwan.
The soldier “tries to track down the remains of his fellow soldiers to prove they were sacrificed in battle,'' Zhang said.
He said the cast won't include any stars and that Feng will cast newcomers.
Feng recently directed the ancient Chinese drama Banquet (夜宴), a story inspired by Hamlet and starring Zhang Ziyi (章子怡).
In a different military movie, a US soldier who defected to communist North Korea more than 40 years ago will finally get to tell his story to the world in an upcoming film, executives said.
Crossing the Line covers the stories of four US army defectors to the North, including the last one known to be still in Pyongyang -- Private First Class James Joseph Dresnok.
It will have its world premiere at South Korea's Pusan film festival next month.
Dresnok crossed the heavily fortified border from South Korea to the North in August 1962 at age 21.
Fellow defector Charles Robert Jenkins, who was allowed to leave the North in 2004 with his wife Hitomi Soga, a Japanese who had been abducted by the communist state, also appears in the film.
The two other defectors are now dead.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon are in final negotiations to star in the espionage thriller Rendition, it was reported Wednesday.
Gyllenhaal, nominated for an Academy Award for playing a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain, will star as a CIA analyst based in Cairo who witnesses the interrogation of a foreign national by Egyptian secret police.
Witherspoon, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Johnny Cash's wife, June Carter Cash, in Walk The Line at this year's Academy Awards, will play the pregnant wife of Gyllenhaal's character, the respected movie industry daily the Hollywood Reporter said.
Julie Andrews is to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award when the Screen Actors Guild hands out its annual honors next year, the prestigious acting body said Monday.
The 70-year-old British star of musical classics such as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music will be given the award on Jan. 28 in recognition of an entertainment career that has spanned six decades.
Andrews won a best actress Oscar in 1964 for her famous role as the flying nanny in Mary Poppins but is best known for playing Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music.
She first rose to prominence after a dazzling performance as Eliza Doolittle in the original stage production of My Fair Lady.
Australian star Russell Crowe has angrily denied reports that he is set to play crocodile hunter Steve Irwin in a movie immortalizing the daredevil naturalist.
Crowe, a good friend of Irwin who was killed by a stingray barb in a freak accident earlier this month, said he was appalled at suggestions that he was planning to star in a biopic, just weeks after the Australian's death.
RSS