John Woo joins Chinese propaganda blockbuster

HONG KONG (AP) — Filmmaker John Woo is the first celebrity to join the cast of the second major film in the leading Chinese state film studio’s campaign to reform the propaganda genre with a heavy dose of star power.

Last year, China Film Group Corp. released The Founding of Republic to mark the Chinese Communist Party’s 60th year in power.

Eager to beef up the party’s image among audiences who favor commercial blockbusters or Hollywood fare, the studio stacked the historical epic with Chinese-language cinema’s biggest stars. Actors like Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Andy Lau were happy to comply even though they were given mere cameos, mindful of the importance of cultivating relationships in the booming mainland market.

China Film Group is now following up the $8.8-M production with a second star-studded blockbuster that commemorates the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party next year.

The first celebrity to sign on is Mission: Impossible II director Woo, China Film Group Film Production Corp. president Zhao Haicheng told The Associated Press in a phone interview last Wednesday.

The veteran filmmaker will play Lin Sen, the former president of the ruling Nationalist government that the communists forced into exile in Taiwan in 1949, he said.

Shooting will start in mid- to late- August, Zhao said, declining to give further details.

The film called The Founding of a Party in Chinese will trace events between the 1911 revolution that overthrew imperial rule and the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, the Chinese news website Sina.com reported.