Tsui has fun with Catching Monkey

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Production News

Chinese director Tsui Hark (徐克, pictured) has secretly made a movie in 3-D, which will be pitched for sale at next month's American Film Market in Santa Monica.

Starring actresses Charlie Young (楊采妮) and Yu Nan (余男) alongside Daniel Chan, Catching Monkey (抓猴) is a thriller that is now in post-production. The title is a Taiwanese reference to the discovery of an illicit affair and is also the name of a band of computer hackers who feature in the movie harvesting information from people's online bank accounts.

Tsui, who recently delivered hit Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (狄仁杰之通天帝國), originally planned to shoot some test scenes in 3-D ahead of embarking on mega-budget stereoscopic Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (龍門飛甲), which is now in production in China.

But, after shooting a handful of scenes, Tsui and producer Nansun Shi (施南生) decided to ramp up and shoot a full movie instead. "We found that doing test scenes was not representative of the real conditions of making a film," said Shi. "Catching Monkey is a fully-scripted movie with a real cast and was therefore far more rigorous than any test."

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, which weighs in with a budget of $35 million, stars Jet Li (李連杰), Zhou Xun (周迅), Chen Kun (陳坤) and Guey Lun-mei (桂綸鎂). It is financed by Bona International Film Group (博納國際影業集團), China Film Group (中國電影集團公司), Shanghai Media Group (SMG, 上海東方傳媒集團), Shineshow (北京華影盛世文化傳播公司) and Liangzi Group (北京良子集團公司).

It was announced yesterday that Taiwanese pop star Mavis Fan (范曉萱) who previously appeared in omnibus About Love (アバウト・ラブ) and the recent Lover's Discourse (戀人絮語), has also joined the Dragon Gate cast.

International sales on both films are by Hong Kong-based Distribution Workshop (發行工作室), which now counts three 3-D films on its AFM line-up.

Workshop is also selling Flying Machine in 3-D, a family entertainment adventure that mixes live action with stop motion animation. Now in post-production it stars Heather Graham and world renowned Chinese pianist Lang Lang.

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