Chinese production company Jiabo Culture and Berlin-based Syrreal Entertainment are joining forces on Fox Mission, a $20 million fantasy-adventure film.
Syrreal's Christian Alvart will direct Fox Mission, which is set to shoot in Beijing and Berlin starting this fall. The film is planned as the first in a series of projects between the two companies.
Syrreal and Jiabo didn't reveal much about the movie's plot except to say it is inspired by traditional Chinese mythology.
Alvart will produce Fox Mission together with Jiabo Culture CEO Xianqiang Song, Lou We and Syrreal's Siegfried Kamml. Canadian producer May He will act as executive producer on the project and coordinate between the German and Chinese teams.
Alvart burst onto the German scene more than a decade ago with a pair of low-budget, high-gloss thrillers: Curiosity & the Cat and Antibodies. He followed up with two English-language features —Pandorum with Ben Foster, and Rene Zellweger-starrer Case 39 —neither of which took off at the box office, before returning to Germany.
His latest, Nick Off Duty, a feature spin-off from a hit German cop series, underperformed, earning less than $3 million at the box office, despite featuring German star Til Schweiger.
Alvart's style of action-packed genre films have traditionally been a hard sell in Germany. He's hoping the booming Chinese market will be more receptive.