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Wong Kar-wai to produce ‘Ferryman’, Tony Leung signed to star

FERRYMAN 1Sina:

Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Wong Kar-wai and Zhang Jiajia yesterday attended the press conference to announce their new film titled ‘Bai Du Ren‘, translated as ‘Ferryman‘. The original writer Zhang Jiajia will direct the film and Wong Kar-wai will produce. The story is part of his 2014 best seller “I Belonged To You.” Zhang Jiajia thanked the team for its support and hoped that the first collaboration with Leung would set off a spark. Zhang even “expressed his feeling” to Leung and said that he was the only choice for the new film.

Tony Leung said “I took Ferryman because I want to play a romantic comedy.” He said that this time he took the role after reading only the synopsis, so far he still has not seen a script. He fully trusted his frequent collaborator Wong Kar-wai. After ten years without a romantic comedy he said that he had a lot of pressure with the performance.

Wong Kar-wai said that the script was being worked on. Wong was asked about only producing instead of directing and he listed five reasons for this. “This story is very influential, its director must be able to achieve five points, including that it must be like hot pot casserole, must be able to drink, must have a post 80 nostalgia, sounds like Wong Kar Wai but actually is Stephen Chow, and have the attention of a lot of women. Thus Zhang Jiajia is the most suitable.”

Financial backing is coming from Alibaba Pictures Group Limited. ‘Ferryman’ is the first movie project mainly run by Alibaba Pictures since it was established last year. The movie is expected to be released by the end of this year.

FERRYMAN 2FERRYMAN 3

 

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Jun Ji-Hyun and Tony Leung rumoured to star in ‘Ferryman’

jun ji hyun

Apple Daily:

Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai has approached South Korean star Jun Ji-Hyun to star opposite Tony Leung Chiu-wai in his next movie, ‘Ferryman‘.

The actress is keen to work with the award-winning Grandmaster director, but is committed to another film project, Apple Daily said. Wong’s shoot is set to start in September in Nanjing, whereas Jun has a shoot at the end of the year for the film ‘Assassination‘.  Ferryman is a romance based on a Chinese short story by writer Zhang Jiajia.

Jun, who shot to international fame in 2001’s ‘My Sassy Girl’, could play Ah Yu, a young woman who is in love with painter Ma Li, to be played by Leung.

Wong is planning to cast ‘Lust, Caution’ actress Tang Wei as Ma Li’s unfaithful former wife, and Taiwanese-Japanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro as Zhang.

A spokesman for Wong’s Jet Tone Films said that filming was to begin later this year, but did not name any of the cast. “I can only say that the actors we are talking to are heavyweights,” she said.

Song Hye Kyo, the South Korean actress who played the wife of Ip Man (Leung) in The Grandmaster, had found working with the director difficult. The film was 10 years in the making, and shooting took three years. All the actors said the filming was arduous and Song was said to be unhappy with the time-consuming shoot. The language barrier was also an issue for her, and may surface again should Jun be cast.

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Wong Kar-wai to adapt “I Belonged To You”

Wong Kar Wai

According to a new report from Hong Kong’s The Standard, Wong Kar-wai will shoot his next film in 2015. Mei Ah Entertainment are producing, with their chief executive Patrick Tong Hing-chi hinting it will be a romantic movie, adding that the main actor is someone “all women are crazy about.” Tong refused to say whether it is another collaboration with Tony Leung Chiu-wai, who has starred in seven of Wong’s eleven movies.

Filmbiz:

Wong Kar-wai is set to adapt a short story from the collection I Belonged to You 從你的全世界路過 for his next film. Author Zhang Jiajia confirmed the news yesterday on his Weibo microblog.

Originally published on the internet as “bedtime stories”, the book is divided into 38 chapters. It is described as a “cluttered” collection of love stories written in the style of a “friend narrating his tales to you in the middle of the night.”

Wong is adapting the chapter called 擺渡人 (literally Ferryman), about an affair between a girl and a married artist in Changchun. Rights for individual chapters of the book have reportedly been sold to other film companies, but Wong’s adaptation is the first that has been officially announced by Zhang himself.

According to its publisher, stories from the book have been reposted 1.5 million times on Chinese microblogs. In book form it has reportedly sold over two million copies. Zhang previously co-wrote the script of Wuershan’s The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman.

Zhang wrote that the film is set to begin shooting soon with a very strong cast. Earlier this month,Mei Ah’s Patrick Tong told local media that Wong was preparing to shoot a romance in 2015.

ZHANG Jiajia