Zhang Ziyi, Jang Dong-gun to star in Chinese Dangerous Liaisons

Chinese star Zhang Ziyi [pictured], Korea’s Jang Dong-gun and Hong Kong’s Cecilia Cheung have come on board to start in Dangerous Liaisons, the Chinese-language film version of French Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 18th-century novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The shoot will start tomorrow in Shanghai, Zonbo Media has confirmed.

Korea director Hur Jin-ho (One Fine Spring Day, April Snow) will direct the film, invested jointly by Zonbo Media, Singapore’s Homerun Asia as well as several China-based private investors.

According to Zonbo’s CEO Chen Weiming, the production cost of the film reaches $30m, with its release date set at summer 2012.

Chen says the company will also handling international sales of the film. Zonbo is currently in talks with distributors such as Singapore’s Homerun Asia and Korean Showtime for Southeast Asia and Korean rights.

Author and scriptwriter Yan Geling, who is known for her scripts of Zhang Yimou’s latest The Flowers of War, serves as scriptwriter of the film. Also in the cast are Chinese American actress Lisa Lu and upcoming Chinese actor Dou Xiao, who stars Zhang Yimou’s Under the Hawthorn Tree.

In the Chinese adaptation, the background of the story is shifted from the 18th Century French Aristocrats to Shanghai in the 1930s. Jang Dong-gun plays a young man, Xie Yifan, from a wealthy Shanghai family who is reunited with his former lover, a well-known actress Mo Jieyu (Cecilia Cheung) on the eve of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai. A love triangle story unfolds when Jang later encounters Du Fenyu (Zhang Ziyi) after the Japanese occupied the city. The jealous Mo began works on a scheme to manipulate the relationship between Xie and Du.

Dangerous Liaisons marks the third collaboration of director Hur Jin-ho and Zonbo Media, which was the China investor and distributor of Hur’s 2004 film April Snow and invested in his 2009 China-set drama A Good Rain Knows.

Announced in June this year, Zonbo Media and Singapore’s Homerun Asia has set up a strategic partnership to co-invest RMB400m to RMB500m in the next three years on pan-Asia projects. In addition to Dangerous Liaisons the two companies plan to present four more films with their production size and cast similar to Dangerous Liaisons.

Earlier in March, Zonbo set up a Chinese-Korean joint venture Zonbo-Balcon to distribute Chinese and Asian films in South Korea. The company owns and operates four cinemas and has set up an alliance of cinemas with 50 movie theaters across South Korea.