Monkey Peaches reports that according to Beijing based newspaper Star Daily, John Woo's Lion Rock Picture has sign a deal with Chinese studio Poly Huayi Media over jointly producing "Battle Of The Red Cliff", based on part of classic Chinese novel "Romance Of The Three Kingdoms".
President of Poly Huayi Media, Dong Ping said budget of the project was no less than US$ 36 million which would be the most expensive film ever produced by Chinese film industry. Reportedly, John Woo has been working on the adaptation for years and only reached the deal with Poly Huayi Media very recently.
'Kingdoms' is a 14th / 15th Century fiction based on China's history from the 2nd to the 3rd Century, during which, the Han Dynasty split into three empires and then reunited under Jin, a new region. "Battle Of The Red Cliff" will feature Cao Cao from the north commanding an army of nearly one million to attack two other warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan down the south and after a series of dramatic events, Cao was finally defeated at the Red Cliff.
In a letter to Poly Huayi Media, John Woo wrote the story of "Battle of the Red Cliff" was in gigantic scale with multiple layers of elements. It featured characters with distinctive personalities and battles conducted with brilliant strategies. He said the film would not be a martial-art feature, but rather an moving story at epical scale.
According to Dong Ping, filming would start as early as next year. Currently, John Woo is shooting Spy Hunter with The Rock in the States. Poly Huayi Media is a half private and half state-own enterprise, which just opened for business last December.
Thanks to 'Antoine'.
