Ridley Scott in Talks to Produce Chinese Action Thriller

The veteran filmmaker is circling a $35 million military drama based on the evacuation of Chinese nationals during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.


Veteran director and producer Ridley Scott is in talks with China's Zhejiang Talent Television and Film Co. to produce Amman Mission, an action-thriller based on the evacuation of Chinese nationals in 1990 during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.


Titled "Goodbye, Kuwait" in Chinese, the project is in development and represented by Hong Kong-based Media Quiz at Filmart. Budgeted at $35 million, the film will be shot in the Chinese autonomous regions of Ningxia and Xinjiang, as well as in Kuwait.


Media Quiz told that Scott has read the first draft of the script and is awaiting a revised version. His name is on the promotion poster of the project, which also detailed how 4,885 Chinese evacuated Kuwait within 48 hours. "One motherland," it also states, recalling the Chinese patriotism in recent mega blockbusters like Wolf Warriors 2 and Operation Red Sea, which are the top two films in China's box-office history and together grossed $1.42 billion. Both movies also featured an evacuation plot, from an unnamed African nation and Yemen, respectively.


Scott's last Chinese releases were All the Money in the World and Alien: Covenant, the latter of which was heavily censored and grossed $46 million in China.


Established in Zhejiang in 2005, Zhejiang Talent Television and Film is mostly known for TV dramas and The Voice of China, but has also backed films such as Jackie Chan's Chinese Zodiac and Skiptrace. It was listed on the Nasdaq-style ChiNext of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2015.