Blossoms Agency Flowering With Slate of Mainland China Blockbusters
Chinese indie sales agency Blossoms Entertainment returns to FilMart with a slate of large-scale commercial pictures sourced from a clutch of China’s biggest film studios.
The agency, operated by former IM Global staffers Vicky Ding and Leslie Chen, is pre-selling “Railway Heroes,” a tale of heroism and wartime sabotage which is targeting a National Day release in October. The film is directed by Yang Feng with a cast headed by Zhang Hanyu and Fan Wei.
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“Never Stop,” a sports drama about the careers of two sprinters, is poised to release in China around the time of the Tokyo Olympics this summer. The cast is headed by “Shadow” star Zheng Kai (aka Ryan Zheng), with direction by Han Bowen.
Leste Chen’s “Upcoming” (aka “Sheng Xia Wei Lai”) marks the “Eternal Summer” director’s return to the romantic coming of age genre after more recent efforts in other directions including “The Great Hypnotist” and “Battle of Memories.” The new film, to be released on Aug. 14, features Leo Wu (“Shadow,”) and Zhang Zifeng (Detective Chinatown series) as two high school students with secret lives.
Blossoms is launching “Counter Attack” the directorial debut of martial artist and actor Vincent Zhao (“Once Upon a Time in China IV & V,” “Green Snake,” “True Legend,” “God of War”). The military action-thriller, which also stars Zhao tells a vengeance story of a Chinese security expert who, against incredible odds, fights drugs dealers, arms smugglers and mercenaries in South East Asia after being framed for a murder. The film was released exclusively on Tencent Video in mid-Feb in mainland China and has pulled in close to 100 million views within a month.
The agency has also picked up China Film Group’s “The Sacrifice,” one of the biggest mainland Chinese hits of 2020. A war action picture co-directed by Guan Hu (“The Eight Hundred”), Frant Gwo (“The Wandering Earth”) and Lu Yang, the film grossed $165 million from a late October slot. It stars Wu Jing (“Wolf Warrior 2”), Deng Chao (“Shadow”) and Zhang Yi (“The Eight Hundred”).
Blossoms launched in summer last year and made the dislocated and virtual 2020 edition of FilMart its first market. The company has an output deal with Huayi Brothers, which last year brought it partial rights representation on blockbuster “The Eight Hundred” and recent release “The Yin Yang Master.”
The company has another relationship with Alibaba’s streaming video platform Youku Tudou, which has given it a slate of more than 50 web films.
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