Twilight director to make Chinese love epic

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Twilight director to make Chinese love epic

Hardwicke said the film 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.

By Ap

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Published: Sun 28 Jun 2015, 9:12 PM

Last updated: Wed 8 Jul 2015, 2:53 PM

Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke said 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. 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 film 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.

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.”

Hardwicke said 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.”


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