Hong Kong filmmaker Peter Ho-sun Chan has launched a production company to focus on streaming content, Changin’ Pictures, with a debut slate of five projects and talent including action star Donnie Yen and Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.
The new clothing aims to “revolutionize the streaming multiverse in Asia”By signing up top filmmakers and new talent from across the region, Chan will create drama series for a pan Asian audience. Chan also intends to collaborate with platforms and potential co-production partners who want to jump into Asia’s expanding streaming market.
Changin’ Pictures plans to roll out 20 limited series across various genres from across the Asia Pacific region in its first four years.
The slate’s first two projects are Korean series. Both were adapted from webtoons. One: High School HeroesCovenant Pictures produced the film titled “The End of Time”.Desperate Mr.This is the story of a bullied teenager in high school who turns into a hero. Heesu In Class 2Film K (Production)Escape from Mogadishu) is billed as a bittersweet love story between two high school students.
Donnie Yen has been attached as showrunner Outright Loser, Hidden Master, the action star’s first foray into series, billed as “a reinvention of the martial arts genre in a never-before-seen universe”. Yen will also star as an Asian American martial artist who, after noticing that some ordinary folks in Hong Kong are actually kung fu masters, discovers that martial artists have been passing down their lineage through imprinting their memories and martial art skills onto strangers’ bodies.
Zhang Ziyi will appear in The MurdererChan will direct the thriller of true crime, titled. Based on a historical case in Shanghai in the ’40s, the series revolves around a woman accused of dismembering her husband and traces events in China from Japanese Occupation and the Nationalist government to the birth of a new China.
Anthology horror series are also included in the debut slate The Eye, a reboot of the popular horror IP, produced by Thailand’s Banjong Pisanthanakun (Pee Mak), and directed by fellow high-profile Thai filmmakers Nattawut Baz Poonpiriya (One for The Road), Parkpoom Wongpoom (ShutterWisit Sasanatieng (Tears Of The Black Tiger).
Esther Yeung is joining Changin’ Pictures as chief operating officer. She was formerly general manager, head of sales distribution, at Bill Kong’s Edko Films, where she oversaw the local release of films such as Drive My Car, Parasite and Shoplifters.
Chan was among the first Asian filmmakers who promoted pan-Asian collaboration in the early 2000s. This was through the Hong Kong-based Applause Pictures. They spearheaded coproductions and anthologies alongside filmmakers such as Kim Jee-Woon and Takashi Miike, Takashi Mike, Takashi Miike and Nonzee Nimibutr.
“I don’t want this to be a Peter Chan’s company,”Chan. “We are not a director’s production company. It is only filmmaker-backed and filmmaker-driven so that we could raise our level of productivity and efficiency. We aspire to be Asia’s most effective one stop shop for international production partners and streaming platforms.”
Chans’ credits as director include Comrades, Almost A Love Story (1996), Perhaps Love (2005), The Warlords (2007), Bodyguards and assassins (2009), Wu Xia (2011), American Dreams in China (2013), Dearest (2014) Leap (2020).