Tian Li’s re-interpretation of Love With The Perfect Stranger has won the Shaw Brothers remake screenplay competition, launched by Hong Kong-based Celestial Pictures in conjunction with the Beijing Film Academy (BFA) and Youth Film Studio (YFS).

Runners up in the competition are Huang Huang’s version of Loving You, which was originally directed by Johnnie To, and Wang Mengyuan’s take on The Lady Is The Boss, which originally starred Shaw Brothers icon Kara Hui.

Directed by Jamie Luk, Love With the Perfect Stranger won best screenplay and best actress for Pauline Wong’s performance at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 1986.

Award-winning Taiwanese producer and director Sylvia Chang will mentor Tian Li and help produce his script in cooperation with Celestial Pictures. Celestial will also work closely with BFA and YFS to jointly produce the other two screenplays.

The screenplay competition is part of Celestial Pictures’ New Directors Workshop (NDW) programme, which aims to nurture new Chinese filmmaking talent, using properties in the Celestial-owned Shaw Brothers film library.

“This is just the beginning of a programme which we hope will lead to more collaboration among the three parties to provide opportunities for promising directors to have their visions realised,” said Celestial Pictures CEO Ross Pollack.

Launched in 2011, the Shaw Brothers remake screenplay competition was open to BFA’s 2011 graduating class as well past graduates of BFA’s directors programme.

The contestants had to submit original treatments based on one of ten pre-selected movies from the Shaw Brothers library. Six finalists were then selected and given funds to develop their treatments into full-length screenplays.

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