Buyers hopping for hot Chinese animation Rabbit

China’s Tianjin Film Studio is off to a roaring start at EFM with pre-sales on the 3D animation Legend Of A Rabbit. In the first three days of the market, the film has sold to Noori for Korea, Luxor Film for Russia/CIS, Ram Indo for Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and Horizon International for Turkey.

To keep a promise to a dying Kung Fu master on the run, a humble farmhouse Rabbit must step out of the kitchen, and take on ancient Beijing’s baddest Panda in order to save the fate of China’s Kung Fu Academy forever.

The $12m Legend Of A Rabbit was created by a team of 500 animators over three years and is in post-production now. Director Sun Li Jun is a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy Animation School whose past features include the award-winning Zhang Ga The Soldier Boy. The film’s seven fight scenes were choreographed by leading Tai Chi master Jing Jian Jun.

The film could well be China’s answer to the success of Kung Fu Panda.

“We were going for that US visual quality. And have achieved the high quality in, for instance, the moving hair on animals which is the standard in these cases,” said Dong Fachang, producer and Chief Financial Officer of Tianjin Film Studio.

Tianjin Film Studio is part of Tianjin Film Group, which holds shares in China’s second largest film distribution company Hua Xia. The company is looking at a wide release in China of about 1,000 screens in July.

The company is also selling psychological thriller The Floating Shadow and drama Fairy Tales at the market.