Alibaba Pictures is going full court press with its movie productions by collaborating with foreign filmmakers. After the Chinese film company tapped the services of an Italian director for a feature film in April, it will soon collaborate with the "Harry Potter" producer for the film adaptation of a children's book series "Warriors".
The collaboration for "Warriors" befell when China's Alibaba Pictures brought the rights to a book series from Britain about four clans of wild cats. There are 36 books in the main series of the novels, coined by a writing team known as Erin Hunter, which have sold over 30 million copies worldwide.
"Warriors," the first live-action film of Alibaba Pictures, would follow Rusty, the protagonist which is a cat raised by humans. Rusty would join a wild cat clan in the woods. Because Rusty is house-trained and lives in a human home, he is defamed and considered a stranger by the wild cats. The wild cats get Rusty familiarized into the forest where he had to earn his place in spite of great prejudgment against him.
"The beauty of it is that there are no humans in the stories. What you have are cats." Heyman told The Hollywood Reporter. "It could be in any language and not necessarily an English-language or Chinese-language film. Though I suspect it'd probably be set in a forest in the U.K., because the authors are British. We may look for actors anywhere."
Currently, Hayman doesn't have the script for "Warriors" yet. It also remains to be seen if the creative team will be composed mostly by the Chinese. Although Alibaba Pictures is on board for this movie, there is no guarantee that it will be released in China. It was also reported that the film will be in 3D. Stay tuned to GamenGuide for developments.
