EXCLUSIVE: Hong Kong-based Pegasus Motion Pictures is launching sales on crime thriller Z Storm, starring Louis Koo and Lam Ka Tung, at AFM.

Directed by David Lam, the $6.5m (HK$50m) film revolves around Hong Kong anti-corruption police investigating a charity fund that has become involved in a Bernie Madoff-style ponzi scheme.

Koo stars as an officer of Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), a real-life organisation that cleaned up Hong Kong in the 1970s, while Liu Kai-chi and Lo Hoi-pang round out the cast.

The film, co-produced by Pegasus and China’s Sil-Metropole Organisation, marks Lam’s return to directing after a hiatus of more than ten years, during which he has worked in Hong Kong’s financial industry.

Production is scheduled to start in January 2014 pending Chinese government script approval. John Chong [pictured], the former Media Asia boss who joined Pegasus last year as CEO, is producing. “We’re finding that Chinese audiences like watching contemporary, realistic thrillers about the inner workings of the Hong Kong police,” said Chong.

Pegasus is also selling Po-chih Leong’s horror film Baby Blues 3D, which was released over Halloween in China where it grossed $2.5m on its opening weekend, and Wilson Chin’s Kung Fu Angels – a coming-of-age story about a rich girl who goes to China to learn kung-fu.

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