Chinese director Zhang Yimou, who wowed the world with his opening and closing ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics in 2008, will make a promotional film to boost the Chinese capital’s bid to host 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
If Beijing, which is applying jointly with the city of Zhangjiakou to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, wins the right to hold the Games, Zhang looks a dead cert to again direct the opening and closing ceremonies.
News that Zhang Yimou would be taking on the promo film duties was leaked at a news conference for a Young Director Competition organized by China Movie Channel in Beijing.
Host Zhang Bin also said Zhang Yimou would stage opening and closing events.
Zhang Yimou said he would love to find a young Chinese director to join his team and help him with the Olympic promo.
“After that, you may have an opportunity to direct a future blockbuster,” said Zhang.
China loves the international profile that hosting major global sporting events affords.
The 2008 summer games in Beijing were viewed as China’s debut on the world stage and a way of marking the world’s second largest economy’s remarkable rise in the previous three decades.
Zhang is one of China’s most accomplished, and prolific, directors.
From being banned in the 1980s and 1990s for Red Sorghum and Raise the Red Lantern to becoming a popular figure for his martial arts epics Hero and House of Flying Daggers, to directing Christian Bale in the war movie Flowers of War. He is currently working on Great Wall, a big-budget fantasy epic about the mysterious reasons why the Great Wall of China was built, for Legendary East.
Zhang Bin, a TV host, first revealed that Zhang Yimou would be the director of the Olympic promo at the press conference for the “China Influence”. Although the Olympic committee’s vote is only one year away, everything is going smoothly and is well-prepared.
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