By Louise Watt
BEIJING (AP) --"Twilight" director Catherine Hardwicke said Thursday she is making a sweeping romantic epic set in an ancient Silk Road city located in present-day western China.
"Loulan" will be based on a city and kingdom of the same name that mysteriously disappeared hundreds of years ago. Its ruins are surrounded by desert in China's Xinjiang region, which stretches to Central Asia. One mummy unearthed from the area in recent decades is known as the "Loulan Beauty," and she was Caucasian with European features.
Hardwicke said the $50 million China-U.S. co-production will revolve around a princess who may be the Loulan Beauty's "great-great granddaughter," and who will be played by an American or English actress. It will be set in 200 B.C., at a time when Loulan was a thriving 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 fought 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.
She said the two warring sides both send "young charismatic hot men diplomats to try to win her heart and her loyalty." The movie will be a coming-of-age romance, set against the backdrop of a mixing pot of cultures including Persians, Indians, Greeks, Romans and Chinese, she said.
Hardwicke, who directed the first installment of the successful movie series "Twilight" about a young girl caught in a love triangle with a vampire and a werewolf, told The Associated Press she thought she had been asked to direct "Loulan" because of "Twilight" — "that kind of powerful love story that was intimate yet had scope and scale and beauty."
Explaining why she took on "Loulan," she said, "I loved the idea of this mix of cultures and these young kids that are in love and that are struggling with very heavy issues of war and peace."
Filming in Xinjiang and Beijing is expected to start in August 2016, with a target release date of late 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, and Village Roadshow Pictures Asia, whose holding company is the Los Angeles-based Village Roadshow Entertainment Group.
Netflix’s subscriber growth is slowing, but its profit and stock price are still surging
Netflix on Thursday reported that its subscriber growth slowed dramatically during the summer, a sign the huge gains from the video-streaming service's crackdown on freeloading viewers is tapering off.
The 5.1 million subscribers that Netflix added during the July-September period represented a 42% decline from the total gained during the same time last year.
Even so, the company's revenue and profit rose at a faster pace than analysts had projected, according to FactSet Research.
Netflix ended September with 282.7 million worldwide subscribers โ far more than any other streaming service.
The Los Gatos, California, company earned $2.36 billion, or $5.40 per share, a 41% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 15% from a year ago to $9.82 billion. Netflix management predicted the company's revenue will rise at the same 15% year-over-year pace during the October-December period, slightly than better than analysts have been expecting.
The strong financial performance in the past quarter coupled with the upbeat forecast eclipsed any worries about slowing subscriber growth. Netflix's stock price surged nearly 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out, building upon a more than 40% increase in the company's shares so far this year.
"We had a plan to reaccelerate growth and we delivered on that plan," Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during a video call discussing the results.
The past quarter's subscriber gains were the lowest posted in any three-month period since the beginning of last year. That drop-off indicates Netflix is shifting to a new phase after reaping the benefits from a ban on the once-rampant practice of sharing account passwords that enabled an estimated 100 million people watch... Read More