Hong Kong's BIG Media Group is joining forces with mainland Chinese digital cinema operator Time Antaeus to co-produce Jingle Ma's next project Playboy Cops.

Chinese actor Chen Kun and Hong Kong's Shawn Yue are set to star in the $2.2m action comedy which is scheduled to start shooting at the end of June. Yue will play a Hong Kong cop with a rich but corrupt father working with a mainland cop who has inherited a fortune.

Ma is also attached to direct action romance Butterfly Lovers for BIG Media but the project has been delayed until the first quarter of next year due to star Louis Koo's schedule. The $4m retelling of a famous Chinese love story is also set to star Yue and up-and-coming Chinese actress Liu Yifei.

Mei Ah Entertainment, which is BIG's largest shareholder, is handling international sales on both Playboy Cops and Butterfly Lovers, along with other projects on the start-up company's slate.

Headed by former Media Asia executive director Wellington Fung, BIG is also producing a sequel to A Better Tomorrow - entitled Another Better Tomorrow - which is being set up as a co-production with Korea and is set to star Ti Long and Louis Koo.

The company is also developing Turandot, a China-set period drama inspired by the Puccini opera; Lawrence Lau's Besieged City, about child gangs, and Vincent Kok's V For Vampire, about vampire chickens terrorising Hong Kong.

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