James Zimmerman’s Acclaimed Nonfiction Book ‘The Peking Express’ Set for Movie Adaptation (Exclusive)

Among the globe’s terrific real train break-in tales is readied to go back to the cinema in China. Filmmaker DaMing Chen and seasoned manufacturer Chris Lee have actually partnered to establish an attribute adaptation of James Zimmerman’s acclaimed nonfiction book, The Peking Express: The Bandits That Takes a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China.

The brand-new movie, like guide, will certainly state the unlikely legend of a 1923 event when referred to as the “Lincheng Outrage,” which was stimulated when Chinese outlaws robbed a deluxe share train bound for Beijing and took control of 300 worldwide captives — astounding the globe and stimulating a six-week geopolitical face-off. A topic of prominent attraction a century earlier, the occasion motivated no much less than Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 romance/adventure timeless Shanghai Express, starring Marlene Dietrich and Anna Might Wong, along with 2 later Paramount Photo remakes.

Zimmerman’s book is the outcome of substantial study in Chinese and worldwide archives. It was released to vast recognition in 2014, with The New york city Times calling it an “Editors’ Choice” and the Financial Times composing,“So extraordinary are the events recounted in The Peking Express that it reads like fantasy…yielding a captivating story of robbery, murder, hostages and intrigue.”

Zimmerman defines his tale hence:“Shanghai, 1923. A sleek blue luxury train departs from China’s cosmopolitan port city and heads into the country’s lawless heartland. Waiting to attack are one thousand heavily armed bandits, disgruntled ex-soldiers led by a charismatic 25-year-old rebel who is dead-set on freeing his province from the yoke of a brutal warlord. His audacious plan is not just to rob the train but to capture its rich and famous passengers, using them as bargaining chips to force a weak Chinese government to grant him autonomous control over his native soil. His raid on the Peking Express will have a cascade of startling consequences: riveting the world press, toppling a Chinese president, advancing Japanese ambitions to infiltrate the country, inspiring a Hollywood blockbuster with Marlene Dietrich, and fueling the revolutionary ambitions of a young Communist named Mao Zedong. Known at the time as the Lincheng Incident, this forgotten episode roped in a global cast of dictators, diplomats, business moguls and good Samaritans who all struggled — sometimes against each other’s interests — to win the hostages’ release during six excruciating weeks in May and June 1923. The jaw-dropping story of what those hostages endured is told from the point-of-view of one of the great foreign correspondents of the period, John B. Powell, a rugged, Hemingway-esque adventurer who happened to be aboard the train when it was attacked. He would not only document the event but play a heroic role in its ending.”

Zimmerman has actually stayed in China for virtually thirty years and functions as a lawyer by day. He’s likewise recognized to be a practiced expert of Beijing’s lasting deportee area, having actually offered 4 terms as chairman of the American Chamber of Business in China.

A personal occasion revealing the strategies for the movie adaptation The Peking Express occurred in Beijing on Friday, attracting a group of concerning 100 from the city’s organization, innovative and polite areas. The majority of famous amongst those existing was the united state ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, that supplied some opening statements commending the movie job as a possibility for the type of people-to-people partnership that the united state and China so direly require at today minute.

“This is obviously not an easy time in the relationship between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China,” Burns claimed.“It’s a really competitive time; it’s a time filled with misunderstandings and rivalry. So what we’ve got to do is keep the two countries together, we’ve got to keep the peoples together.”

He discussed that he was participating in the occasion since he intended to sustain Zimmerman, Chen and their different partners on the cross-border movie jobfor “actually giving us an example of Americans and Chinese working together.”

He included:“That can be powerful, and a film can be very powerful in the modern world. That’s what we need. You know, the governments will find a way to move forward and will be responsible in our competition, but I think the people of both countries actually can lead us forward for decades, where our two societies can continue not just to coexist but actually do some good things together.”

The Peking Express movie is anticipated to be a co-production entailing both Chinese and worldwide movie passions, according to the filmmakers. The worldwide nature of the job would certainly show up well fit to lead manufacturer Chris Lee, the single head of manufacturing at Columbia-Tristar whose varied credit ratings consist of workshop titles like Valkyrie and Superman Returns, along with Chinese attributes (Huayi Brothers’ One Foot Off The Ground) and Oriental event faves (Josh Kim’s Exactly how To Win At Checkers (Each Time)). Lee defines the job as a“great opportunity for cross-border cooperation with an international cast in a story having historical significance for both China and the rest of the world.”

The filmmakers state they anticipate to fire the movie in a number of the exact same areas where the occasions of the break-in and its after-effects occurred a century earlier–“in the mystical mountainous area of southern Shandong Province of China.” While investigating his book, Zimmerman travelled with the Chinese countryside where the train was thwarted and the thousands of captives were marched to the outlaws’ retreat.

“The local Shandong authorities have shown great interest in the story and have welcomed the opportunity for filming on location at the various sites, with much of the key architecture still in existence after 100 years,” claims Chen, the job’s supervisor.

A star transformed writer/director, Chen made his development in the very early 2000s with carefully functioned Chinese business tasks like Manhole (2006) and One Foot Off the Ground (2008 ). He created in 2014’s Andy Lau-starring Chinese struck Procedure Moscow, which gained concerning $95 million, and his following movie as supervisor is Unspoken, a dramatization thriller premiering following month at the Brussels International Fantastic Movie Event.

“The talent [for The Peking Express] will inevitably come from a multinational set, given the passengers dragged off the derailed train by the bandits were prominent citizens of China, the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, Mexico, Germany and Denmark,” Chen discusses.“And those cast as the bandits will be a mixed bag — if not an eclectic and clever band — of heroes, scoundrels and eccentrics.”

Includes Lee: “Jim’s book is a breathtaking page-turner that is all the more amazing because it’s a true story that resonates today.”