, who also helped write the script, the comic "Big Shot's Funeral" is being produced by Sony Pictures Entertainment's 3-year-old Hong Kong unit, Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, Reuters reported. Sutherland plays a world-famous director who comes to modern-day China to make an epic about the last emperor of the Qing dynasty.
Veteran actor/director Paul Mazursky plays Sutherland's "producer sidekick," Barbara Robinson, managing director of Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, said on Wednesday.
Shooting started April 13 and the film is expected to be released around Christmas in Asia, she said. Release dates for the rest of the world have not yet been scheduled. "We'll make the decision after the film is done," she said.
Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia has three other films in the works for 2001.
A Chinese- and English-language mystery "Double Vision," starring Tony Leung Ka Fai, Taiwan's Rene Liu and David Morse, last seen in "Dancer in the Dark," started shooting in early April in Taiwan. Directed by Chen Kuo-Fu and Su Tzao Bing, the film follows the story of a serial killer being tracked by a dogged Taiwanese police detective and an American FBI expert. The last scenes will be shot in Australia.
"Heroes of Heaven and Earth," a Chinese-language adventure epic, will be directed by He Ping ("Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker"), and starring Jiang Wen ("Red Sorghum"), Kiichi Nakai and television actress Zhao Wei. Shooting will start in August, mostly in Xinjiang in the northwest corner of China.
A final project slated for a production start in mid-July is an as-yet untitled action film to be directed by Corey Yuen, who choreographed such U.S. feature films as "Romeo Must Die."
Also starring Zhao Wei, the film, to be shot in Hong Kong, is described as a "high-octane tale of technological wizardry and family bonds," which will star three women -- two sisters pursued by an undercover cop.
Rumors that Hong Kong-born songstress Coco Lee would be in the film were not correct, Robinson said. "Coco was approached but due to recording schedule conflicts won't be able to do the film," she said.
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