HONG KONG -- Chinese/U.S. co-production "The Forbidden Kingdom" could
be the pic that provides the blueprint for a new wave of east-west
cooperation. Based on a classic Chinese story, "The Monkey King," the
pic revolves around a kung fu-loving American teen (Michael Angarano)
who time-travels to ancient China, where he meets up with Jackie Chan
and Jet Li.
Helmed
by "The Lion King" director Rob Minkoff and shot in lavish locations
around China, it's the sort of clean-cut hybrid the Chinese government
would like to encourage.
The recent Hong Kong press junket
brought Chan, Li, Minkoff and cinematographer Peter Pau together at the
Grand Hyatt hotel for a lavish Hollywood-style media event prior to the
pic's April 16 release in Beijing. Pic also reps the first co-billing
for the two Chinese superstars.
Lionsgate unspools the pic April
18 in the U.S. in a wide release, testing the waters for the action
adventure pic in which the actors speak partially in English and
partially in Chinese.
Minkoff says that while "Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon" was a thoroughly Chinese film that appealed to a
worldwide aud, and Universal's "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor"
was an American film that took advantage of Chinese locations,
"Forbidden Kingdom" is more of "a meeting of peers."
Minkoff
likens this recipe to a Western chef working in a Chinese kitchen.
"Certainly we cooked the chef's way, but the ingredients were
authentic," he says.
The notion of finding a middle way between
Western and Chinese filmmaking is important during these turbulent
times. China has encouraged Hollywood to co-produce as a means around
its import quotas. But in recent months, strict enforcement of its
rules on genre, content and political correctness has caused dozens of
previously approved movies to be suspended, pending re-examination by
the authorities.
As a potential four-quadrant entertainment film
without any gore or horror, "Forbidden Kingdom" fills the bill of
delivering unthreatening entertainment for the widest possible
demographic, which is what China seems to want these days from its
filmmakers.
"Kingdom" does this by westernizing a traditional
Sino story, while keeping the look and feel mainstream Chinese. Pic was
made with Western hedge fund coin, but it was filmed entirely in China,
mostly in the colossal Hengdian World Studios and employed a largely
Chinese cast and crew.
The $55 million pic was largely financed
by Ryan Kavanagh's Relativity Media with Casey Silver producing, and
exec producers including Raffaella De Laurentiis, martial-arts guru
Yuen Wo-ping and Wang Zhongjun, co-chief of Huayi Bros., consistently
China's most successful private sector movie group. The Weinstein Co.'s
Asian fund is also an investor.
Minkoff, a longtime Sinophile, learned the subtleties of working the Chinese way even before he began shooting the film.
"I
learned to take time. I got the notion of 'guangxi' (China's intricate system of I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine), I
recognized the importance of meeting with people even if they weren't
directly part of the film," says Minkoff. "Above all, I learned that in
many ways China works the same as Hollywood. There's a lot of blood
allegiances. Really, it's all about who you know."
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