Projects

CHINA BLACK CHAMBER

Based on a book banned in the U.S. for forty years, CHINA BLACK CHAMBER is the true story of Herbert Yardley, a brilliant American code-breaker working in China in the tumultuous years before World War II. A fun-loving gambler and thrill-seeker by nature, Yardley travels to war-torn China to help break the Japanese secret military code and stop Japan’s devastating bombing campaign against China. While struggling to decipher codes, uncover spies, and avoid being killed by assassins and falling bombs, Yardley discovers his own humanity, and ultimately honor.

MELTDOWN

"An Oxford Professor, a secret society, and the future of the global economy at the mercy of one man's obsession."

Professor Wallace Bradley, a Nobel nominated Oxford economist has a secret all consuming obsession - the financial destruction of the global economy. To achieve his aim, in 1982, Bradley recruits nine of his most impressionable and idealistic students. Over the years these dedicated collaborators rise to positions of power from which they deliberately start a financial wildfire designed to cause a global economic meltdown. Investigative journalist, James Emerson, the brother of one of Bradley's collaborators, begins to uncover evidence of the conspiracy as he follows the exploding crisis throughout Asia. With Emerson in pursuit, Bradley prepares to deliver the coup de grace to his ultimate nemesis - Japan. But before doing so, Bradley cannot resist confronting the human embodiment of his hatred, the head of the Bank of Japan - a man who sixty years earlier, as a Army Lieutenant, raped, tortured and killed Bradley's mother during the Japanese occupation of Nanking, China.

STEALING HEMINGWAY

After his ex-wife's sappy romance novel hits the New York Times' top ten list, an envious, hopelessly insecure writer decided to find fame by writing the next great literary masterpiece - a novel about Ernest Hemingway's travels across China during WWII. Imaging himself a modern day Hemingway, the Writer sets out on a macho motorcycle journey across China. Accompanied by his frequently drunk brother-in-law, the Writer picks up a colorful and culturally mixed group of bikers. The group set out to find an old Chinese man who accompanied Hemingway during his 1938 trip across China. In the final stages of his journey, his brother-in-law, the Chinese, and even China itself test the Writer's patience, sense of humor, and moral foundation. Arriving at his destination, he finds the old man never knew Hemingway at all. As he sees his last chance for fame slip away, he comes to understand this ill begotten journey has in fact provided him the material to write his masterpiece.

THE DOG MAN

Inspired by a true story, an adventure-seeking American journalist travels to Hong Kong in 1928 to report on the scourge of piracy in the South China Sea. While unwisely searching for pirates in Macao, the naive American is kidnapped by the most feared pirate, the "Dog Man."

Twenty years prior, the Dog Man was a handsome, successful businessman, until kidnapped by pirates and held for ransom. But his ransom was never paid. For fourteen years, the Dog Man was forced to walk on all fours while living in a small bamboo cage. His body and mind now deformed and twisted, the Dog Man searches for the man who refused to pay his ransom, the man responsible for his hideous deformity, his former business partner and half-brother.

Now a captive of the insane yet brilliant Dog Man, the American comes to understand the pirate underworld and the price of freedom. To stay alive, he must become a co-conspirator in an elaborate plot to murder a wealthy English shipping tycoon, the Dog Man's half-brother.

FOXES

Based on Chinese folklore, a young American travels to China to write his master's theses in Chinese literature. Finding an internship at the local opera house, he quickly becomes captivated by a beautiful Chinese woman who draws him into the mystifying subculture of Sichuan Opera. When three Chinese men are found murdered, all evidence points to the American. As he fights to prove his innocence, the American discovers a secret world of Fox Spirits, breathtakingly beautiful Chinese women who live forever by seducing men and stealing their life force.