In China, an attempt at a Hollywood-style epic

Chinese actress Shi Yanfei filming “Empires of the Deep” on a large set in Huairou, China.

The movie has ancient Greek warriors, pirates, underwater kingdoms, a villain called the Demon Mage and mermaids that kill men during lovemaking. There is a sultry Bond girl, too, playing the mermaid queen. Most of the actors are American, and the cameras use 3-D technology.
But the movie, “Empires of the Deep,” is not another fantasy dreamed up by Hollywood. It is being conceived and shot on the world's largest studio set, north of Beijing.
This mash-up of “Avatar,” “Gladiator” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” all thrown together in a Chinese hot pot, is the vision of a film-obsessed real estate magnate, Jon Jiang, who says his life mission now is to make movies, video games and theme parks. It is also the boldest effort yet by businessmen here to establish China as a global moviemaking powerhouse, one that can create big-budget English-language spectacles to rival those of Hollywood.
China has been able to dominate one manufacturing industry after another but so far has not made significant inroads into the world's most glamorous business. If Jiang, 40, has his way, that will soon change. “Empires of the Deep” could turn out to be a potent demonstration of China's rising cultural influence and draw international filmmakers here to shoot movies that look and feel like Hollywood projects but that are made with the lower costs of Chinese labour and materials.
The producers say the budget for “Empires” is $100 million, less than Hollywood juggernauts but the biggest ever for a Chinese movie, surpassing John Woo's dynastic war epic, “Red Cliff.” It is an ambitious departure from the formulaic historical or Communist propaganda movies usually churned out by the Chinese film industry. Its actors come from the United States, Brazil, France, Japan and elsewhere, its directors hail from Canada and the United States, and the script, written by Jiang, has gone through 40 drafts with the help of 10 Hollywood screenwriters.
“My idea is to make movies on the biggest scale there is,” said Jiang, who was listed by Forbes in 2002 as one of China's richest men. “I want to distribute movies to 160 countries. I want it to be epic.”
Jiang has no prior filmmaking experience but said he had watched 4,000 movies and wanted to make “a very serious love tragedy” that “is a combination of something mystical, something that satisfies your bloodlust and something sensual.” He compares himself not to Chinese filmmakers like Zhang Yimou, but to George Lucas, James Cameron and Peter Jackson, the titans of Hollywood fantasia.
“I'm an international producer,” he said. “I don't want to make Chinese movies. I don't know the Chinese way of storytelling. I don't know how movies are made in China.”
To help open international markets, the producers are hiring foreign talent, including lots of relatively little-known American actors. The biggest star, as the mermaid queen, is Olga Kurylenko, the Ukrainian actress who appeared in the last James Bond movie. (Jiang had originally wanted Monica Bellucci or Sharon Stone, but they said no.)
In Jiang's offices in Beijing, where dozens of young Chinese toil in cubicles on computer graphics for “Empires,” a dry-erase board has an informal schedule for the project. There are three items that are telling of Jiang's ambitions: “Days until Monica Bellucci shows up on set. Days until the Cannes Film Festival. Days until the grand premiere.”
All the lines are blank.
Source: The New York Times