Cheap crews, priceless locations: foreigners focus on the mainland

One year after the Sars outbreak scared away foreign film crews, there are signs that Hong Kong and China are once again becoming hot locations for international productions. Following in the footsteps of Hollywood vampire flick Ultraviolet - which recently wrapped the Hong Kong portion of its shoot and moved to Shanghai - the producers of several big-budget US and European films are considering shooting here or on the mainland.

Among the filmmakers who have been checking out locations in China are British director and producer Anthony Minghella and Hollywood director John McTiernan. After promoting his most recent film, Cold Mountain, in Beijing last month, Minghella and his wife, Carolyn Choa, visited Hengdian World Studios in Zhejiang Province to scout locations for their upcoming project, The Firework-Maker's Daughter, based on the children's book by Philip Pullman.

Minghella is executive producing but not directing the film, which is being financed by US mini-studio Miramax. While at Hengdian, Minghella met an old friend, Chinese director Chen Kaige, who is shooting fantasy epic The Promise at the studio.

McTiernan, the director of films such as Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October, is gearing up to shoot US$45 million action adventure Murder in Canton in China this year. Based on one of the Judge Dee mystery novels, written by Dutch diplomat Robert Hans van Gulik, the film follows the fictional exploits of a real- life character - Tang Dynasty magistrate Di Renjie. The film is being cast now, and is expected to start shooting this summer.

Meanwhile, Merchant Ivory, the British production company behind classic adaptations such as The Remains of the Day and A Room with a View, is also expected to shoot in China this year. The company is producing a US$16 million romantic drama, The White Countess, which is set in 1930s Shanghai. Based on an original screenplay by The Remains of the Day author Kazuo Ishiguro, the film will be directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant and star Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave. It's scheduled to start shooting in China from August.

China's dramatic landscapes and low-cost film crews and studios are an obvious draw for overseas producers, but until recently it wasn't easy to shoot in the country. All film production is tightly regulated by the Film Bureau, and foreign producers need experienced people to help with paperwork, not to mention hiring local crews and sourcing equipment.

But the Chinese government is slowly loosening controls on film production, and production services companies are springing up to help foreign filmmakers. After Quentin Tarantino shot Kill Bill at the Beijing Film Studio in 2002, China began to gain a reputation in Hollywood as an interesting location. Then Sars struck, and put the country off-limits. But it now looks as if foreign shoots are returning in greater numbers than ever.