Wild Bunch comes on board for Wong Kar Wai's Grandmasters

Wild Bunch is teaming with Wong Kar Wai for the director’s next film, The Grandmasters. The $25m martial arts picture stars Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi and Chang Chen with action choreographed by Yuen Woo-Ping.

Wong wrote the script whose tag line is “In martial arts there is no right or wrong, only the last man standing.” Plot details are being kept under wraps but the Chinese-language film, which could be likened to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, is an action-love story involving Bruce Lee’s martial arts master Yip Man.

The film is currently shooting in China and should be ready for Cannes. Wild Bunch is handling international sales outside Asia and will also distribute in France.

Wild Bunch is also handling the latest from Zhang Yimou, Under The Hawthorn Tree. The love story screened in Pusan and was released in China in September. Wild Bunch expects to screen the film in its English-language version in Berlin. The company is handling the world, outside Asia.

From Studio Ghibli, Wild Bunch will sell Arrietty, the Hiromasa Yonebayashi-directed hit that has already banked more than $100m in Japan. For the film, Yonebayashi and Hayao Miyazaki essentially switched places, Wild Bunch’s Vincent Maraval explains. Miyazaki was on script duty and oversaw the animation while Yonebashi took over the role of director. Walt Disney France will release in January.

American Psycho director Mary Harron returns to genre filmmaking with The Moth Diaries. Starring Sarah Bolger, Sarah Gadon and Lily Cole, the film is based on the cult novel by Rachel Klein about an elite girl’s boarding school where a new arrival threatens established loyalties and may be linked to a spate of campus deaths. Ed Pressman is executive producing. Wild Bunch will have a teaser at the AFM

Wild Bunch also has Italian Oscar entry The First Beautiful Thing from director Paolo Virzi.  Wild Bunch France is distributing the tale of love and a life lived to the full by an unconventional and courageous mother. Also out of Italy is The Ages Of Love. Robert De Niro and Monica Bellucci star in the Giovanni Veronesi film about love at a certain age. Carlo Verdone and Michele Placido also star.

From Colombia, Wild Bunch has the world, outside Argentina, Spain and Colombia, on The Squad. A first film from Jaime Mario Osorio Marquez, the genre picture set at a desolate military base is akin to Buried mixed with Paranormal Activity and is already creating Internet buzz. Wild Bunch will have a promo reel for the film which stars Juan Pablo Barragan, Nelson Camayo, Alexandra Aguilar, Andres Torres and Andres Castaneda.

Other films on Wild Bunch’s slate include the previously announced The Last Furlong from director Agnes Merlet, starring Rachel Hurd-Wood and Thomas Sangster; and The Girl Is In Trouble from director Julius Onah with Wilmer Valderrama, Jesse Spencer and Paz de la Huerta.