After three years of preparation to pull off the first Chinese-Danish co-production and break into the attractive Chinese market, Rikke Ennis, (pictured) CEO of TrustNordisk and Zentropa China announced in Beijing on Tuesday the teaming up with Shengwei Media and Jetavana Entertainment on the feature project My Best Friend Andersen.
The Chinese language fantasy adventure penned by the hot Chinese scriptwriter Shu Huan is set to start filming next summer in Hans Christian Andersen’s home town of Odense and in China. Huan will integrate humour to the story to appeal to the most avid cinemagoers in China, fans of comedies and fantasy films such as the home-grown best-selling movie ever Monster Hunt.
The project (previously known as True Beauty) was pitched at the ‘Bridging the Dragon’ platform launched this year to bring European and Chinese film industries closer together.
“When I first read the Danish script and met with Zentropa through Bridging the Dragon, I had no doubt about the great potential of this story and co-operation,” said Huan. Ennis who first came up with the idea for the film says Hans Christian Andersen is a ‘huge brand’ in China. “We thought of revising his universe and making it relevant to young audiences”.
The Chinese market is expected to become the world’s number one film market by 2018 and to double the North American box office by the middle of the next decade. According to WTO regulations, China will have to lift its import quota of 34 foreign films per year by 2017.
Noemi Ferrer Schwenk, head of the International division at the Danish Film Institute, says the DFI is currently negotiating a legal framework around the Danish/Chinese film treaty. “A treaty is the only way to circumvent the quota system by co-producing officially with China and thus having a Danish-Chinese coproduction registered and certified as Chinese,” she said.