Zhang brings Bale back to China

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Production News

Christian BALE is returning to China to star in ZHANG Yimou 張藝謀's The Flowers of War 金陵十三釵 (2011), an adaptation of a novella by YAN Geling 嚴歌苓.

Bale will play the role of a priest whose church shelters prostitutes and female students during the brutal Japanese occupation of Nanjing. When the young students are forced to be sex workers for Japanese soldiers, the prostitutes volunteer to take their place.

Details of the film, including Bale's casting, were announced at a press conference in Beijing today. The film's RMB600 million ($90 million) budget has been fully financed in China through local investors. Shooting of the film will begin 10 Jan 2011 with about 40% of the script in English.

Yan has co-written the screenplay adaptation of her novella with another writer LIU Heng 劉恆. One of Liu's own novellas formed the basis of Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou 菊豆 (1990). Liu also adapted the screenplay for another recent war epic, FENG Xiaogang 馮小剛 Assembly 集結號 (2007).

Bale shot portions of Steven Spielberg's The Empire of the Sun, in Shanghai in March 1987 when he was 13-years-old.

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