Alibaba Pictures is going full steam with its production of movies by collaborating with foreign filmmakers. After the company tapped in April the services of an Italian director for a feature film, it will soon collaborate with the producer of “Harry Potter” for the film adaptation of a children’s book series.
According to Hollywood Reporter, David Heyman, producer of “Harry Potter,” would collaborate with the Chinese movie production company which brought the rights to a book series from Britain about four clans of wild cats. The books were written by a writing team known as Erin Hunter.
The 36 books were published since 2003 and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. The movie, the first live-action film of Alibaba Pictures, would follow Rusty, the main character which is a cat raised by humans. Rusty would join a wild cat clan in the forest, Heyman said.
Because Rusty is domesticated and lived in a human home, he is stigmatized and considered an outsider by the wild cats. The wild cats get Rusty acclimatized into the forest where he had to earn his place in spite of great prejudice against him.
“The interesting thing about the books is there are such a lot of narratives. And the books are still being written, so there will be as many films as long as we can keep telling interesting stories and the audience is receptive of it. We'll keep on making it,” Hayman said. He added Alibaba has not placed a number on how any adaptations of the novels it would make.
Since there are no humans in the first story about Rusty, only cats, Heyman said the movie could be in any language, not necessarily Chinese or English. He explained, “Cats are not specific to any country … Though I suspect it'd probably be set in a forest in the U.K., because the authors are British. We may use actors anywhere. It's too early to tell, but we're open to all possibilities.”
According to Le Film Francais, the movie would be titled “The Clan Wars.”