Fan Bingbing likely to land role in co-production

Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has been invited to play the lead in a Chinese-French co-produced film about a wartime love story, Xinhua news agency reports.

Producers from China and France signed a contract in Paris on Wednesday, January 26, 2011 to make the film, "First Love" (in Chinese "Qing Dou Chu Kai"), during the ongoing Chinese Movie Festival in France.

The producers said they were approaching Fan, as well as French actor Nicolas Duvauchelle, for the movie.

Set in 1950 near the China-Vietnam border, the story centers on the romance between a French soldier and a Chinese girl that ends up in tragedy.

The movie will be shot with a budget of 6.6 million Euros (about US$9 million) in locations in China and France.

It is one of several projects announced in the wake of the signing of a co-production treaty by China and France in April of 2010.

If both Fan and Duvauchelle agree to sign onto the film, it will be their second collaboration after the film "Stretch", which opened in France earlier this month.

The inaugural Chinese Movie Festival in France opened in Paris on January 25 with an opening ceremony attended by Chinese actor-director Jiang Wen and French actor Jean Reno. The festival, running until February 8, will screen 12 Chinese films including Feng Xiaogang's tearjerker, "Aftershock", and Hu Mei's biopic drama, "Confucius".