Hardwicke also directed "Red Riding Hood," "Thirteen" and "Lords of Dogtown." (Photo : The Hollywood Reporter)
Catherine Hardwicke, the director of international movie series "Twilight," will film another love epic in China in 2016.
On Thursday, Hardwicke said that she is making a sweeping romantic epic set in an old Silk Road city based in present-day western China.
"Loulan" will be based on a city and kingdom of the same name that mystically vanished hundreds of years ago.
The Hollywood director said that the $50-million China-U.S. co-production will be about a princess who may be the Loulan Beauty’s "great-great granddaughter.”
There is no confirmation yet on who will play as "Loulan," but Hardwicke said that it will be an American or English actress.
The film will be set in 200 B.C., at a time when Loulan was a developing city on the Silk Road trading route that linked China to the West.
The script is still being written, but the story in what is planned to be the first part of a trilogy will see Loulan fighting over by Han Chinese and warlike nomads, the Huns.
"We have the princess who is in a kind of neutral kingdom at the nexus to the Silk Road, Loulan, and she's trying to keep peace and stay neutral, try to stay like Switzerland between the Huns to the north and the Han dynasty to the east," Hardwicke said.
Hardwicke added that she loves the idea of the mix of cultures and the young kids that are in love and that are struggling with heavy issues of war and peace.
The film is expected to start filming in Xinjiang and Beijing by Aug. 2016.
The romantic epic’s target release date is 2017 or early 2018.
The film is being produced by Loulan Mystery Movie & TV Culture (Beijing) Co. Ltd., a private special purpose company formed with Chinese investment.
Village Roadshow Pictures Asia, whose holding company is the Los Angeles-based Village Roadshow Entertainment Group, will also be one of the film’s producers.
