Fresh from his horse wrangler film Ride On, Jackie Chan has lined up an action comedy flick centering on baby pandas. The 69-year-old screen icon is set to star in Panda Plan, directed by mainland Chinese filmmaker Zhang Luan (Song of Youth, Give Me Five) and produced by Mandarin Motion Pictures and Wishart Media Co.
The project was announced on the last day of Tokyo’s TIFFCOM content market and will make its sales debut at the American Film Market in Los Angeles next week.
The film centers on a rare baby panda with a dark circle around just one eye, who becomes a worldwide sensation when he’s born at China’s Noah Zoo. But when a Middle Eastern tycoon dispatches international mercenaries to kidnap the zoo’s baby pandas, Chan, playing a version of himself as an international action star, is forced to get involved in a rescue mission.
“A thrilling and hilarious panda defense battle then breaks out in this wildlife park,” says Mandarin Motion Pictures’ story summary.
Co-starring in the film are Shi Ce (Hi, Mom), Wei Xiang (Full River Red) and Han Yanbo (The Super Family).
Hong Kong-based Mandarin Motion Pictures will offer the title to international distributors at AFM, which runs Oct. 31-Nov. 4 at Santa Monica’s Le Méridien Delfina hotel.
Aside from Ride On, which earned over $30 million in China in April, Chan was last seen opposite John Cena in Scott Waugh’s U.S.-China co-production Hidden Strike, which bombed in its limited U.S. theatrical release but was widely seen on Netflix internationally. He also voiced Splinter in Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which brought in $180.5 million worldwide for Paramount Pictures.
The relentlessly busy actor has several projects in the works, including DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 4 sequel, in which he voices the character of Master Monkey, and a reported Rush Hour 4 film that’s in development.
