Fox International Productions will finance its first-ever production in Taiwan, writer-turned-director Giddens Ko’s follow-up to his 2011 hit You Are the Apple Of My Eye.
Kung Fu, which like Apple is an adaptation of one of Ko’s own novels, will begin shooting next year, with a release date slated for 2015 with Twentieth Century Fox distributing, according to FIP.
At a press conference held in Taipei on Wednesday, Ko introduced a three-minute teaser made on a budget of $130,000 (NT$4 million). It features six-year-old actress Chi Hsiao-hua, the six-year-old making her debut in the project.
Kung Fu revolves around a high-school student’s growing fascination with martial arts novels and how this changed his teenage life.
By financing rather just distributing the film, FIP is hedging its bets for Ko to repeat the success of Apple, which was a hit at home in Taiwan and, perhaps even more staggeringly, in Hong Kong, where its box-office revenues of $8 million (HK$61.9 million) propelled it past Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle to become the highest-grossing Chinese-language film ever released in the city.
FIP has already produced films across the Taiwan Straits, having backed Hong Kong pair Wing Shya and Tony Chan’s Hot Summer Days (2010) and Lost in Space (2011), as well as The Butcher, The Chef and The Swordsman, and the 2010 directorial debut of mainland Chinese director Wuershan (Painted Skin: Resurrection).