Chinese Movie News From The Shanghai Film Festival

There has been a flurry of news on upcoming Chinese movies at the just concluded Shanghai Film Festival.

1. The creators of the upcoming big-budget Chinese film Bodyguards and Assassins unveiled their huge HK$50 million film set to the press. The film set is a replica of 1905 Hong Kong and is as big as 10 football fields. Part of the star-studded cast including Donnie Yen, Eric Tsang and Fan Bing Bing attended this so-called "opening of the city" ceremony. You can see more scenes of this replica of old Hong Kong city in this new promotional trailer below:



2. Stars of the upcoming period movie Mulan including Vick Zhao (who stars as wartime heroine Hua Mulan), Hu Jun, Xu Jiao (young Mulan) and director Jingle Ma went on a promotional blitz at the festival, including organizing a special "Mulan Night" dinner party. Here is a trailer of Mulan than I found on Youtube.



3. Chinese film The Search won the Grand Jury Prize and Hong Kong star Aaron Kwok's new period movie Empire of Silver won the Jury Prize at the SIFF. Empire Of Silver is about a powerful banking family at the end of the 19th century whilst The Search is a film about a director's search for a missing man. Aaron Kwok will also be in the new Hong Kong movie The Murderer which will also be out in theatres in Hong Kong in July.

Empire of Silver trailer. Looks pretty good...



4. New trailer of upcoming sci-fi comedy Kungfu Cyborg which is scheduled to be released in August. This is definitely one of the campiest trailers I have ever seen... ;-P



5. Feng Xiaogang's highly anticipated upcoming US$18 million disaster movie Aftershock will be the first Chinese film to be in IMAX format. Aftershock is about the life of a girl who survived the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. The film is set to begin filming next month and will be released in IMAX theatres in China and other Asian territories in July 2010. Box-office expectations for this movie is sky-high as director Feng Xiaogang previously helmed such massive box-office hits like If You Are The One, Assembly and The Banquet.

6. Ip Man 2 will start filming in August and Ip Man's disciple Bruce Lee will also make an appearance in the film. Donnie Yen will be reprising his role as Ip Man, but there is still no news yet on who will be playing Bruce Lee. There is another biopic of Ip Man that is also in the works - The Grand Master which will be directed by Wong Kar Wai and stars Lust, Caution star Tony Leung Chiu Wai.

Tags: Shanghai film festival, Chinese movies, Bodyguards and Assassins, Empire Of Silver, Mulan, The Search, Ip Man 2, Kungfu Cyborg, Aftershock, Feng Xiaogang, Aaron Kwok, Donnie Yen.