Legendary Pictures has had a lot of success with movies like The Dark Knight and Watchmen, and now they want to get in on the action in the film world’s fastest growing movie market – Asia. They’ve set up Legendary East in Hong Kong, and now Deadline has revealed what it’s first project will be.
Ed Zwick, director of Glory, The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond has signed up to helm The Great Wall for Legendary East. Zwick and his longtime partner Marshall Herskovitz will write the script, which looks at the mystery behind the famous Chinese wall, based on ideas by Legendary chairman Thomas Tull and World War Z author Max Brooks. There’s not much more info on the project than that, although there’s plenty of history behind the wall for the movie to play with. It was started by Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, in the 3rd Century BC, and was worked on, rebuilt and expanded for the next 2,000 years, until it became a series of walls stretching over 5,500 miles.
Legendary East is hoping to raise $220 million to make movies that will appeal directly to the Chinese market, which is growing exponentially at the moment, while also playing well in the reast of the world. We’ll have to wait and see whether The Great Wall works for them.