Pauline Chan’s Darkroom Films and Filmscope Entertainment have signed co-production deals with two Chinese partners for cross-cultural comedy My Extraordinary Wedding.
The alliance means the film budgeted at $5 million, written and directed by Chan, will get a wide release in Chinese cinemas. Due to shoot in Western Australia and China in the first half of next year, the film will follow a wedding that turns into a wild chase from Perth to Busselton and beyond.
The Chinese partners are Zhejiang Hengdian Film Production Company (Hengdian) and China Film Assist (CFA), whose combined distribution networks encompass 5,600 screens nationwide.
Chan and Filmscope Entertainment’s Deidre Kitcher will produce with Hengdian’s Zhijiang Liu and CFA’s Geng Ling. This will be the third collaboration between Chan and Liu following 33 Postcards, which she wrote and directed, and Mario Andreacchio’s The Dragon Pearl, which she produced.
“Each of the producers brings their special expertise and resources, creating an exciting synergy and optimized opportunities for the project,” Chan says.
Zheijiang Hengdian Film Production is part of the Hengdian Group, which has produced dozens of feature films and TV series over the last decade and owns 1000 screens across China. CFA is a Beijing-based Chinese production company which co-owns Soundfirm Beijing.
Filmscope Entertainment produced John V Soto’s The Reckoning (2013), Needle (2011) and Crush (2009).
Soto tells IF that discussions are underway with sales agents to handle My Extraordinary Wedding outside China and Hong Kong.
He is in Los Angeles for talks with sales agents, financiers and distributors on two Filmscope projects, That Which Haunts Me and The Vines, a thriller about a cop on the verge of retirement who is posted to a small town in the Margaret River region and encounters a murder on his first day on the job.
"I'd say both have a good chance of getting made, most likely late 2015/early 2016," he says.