Fresh from slaying vampires in The Twins Effect, Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin and Gillian Chung Yan-tung are about to don masks and black spandex tights to star in an action comedy with the working title Black Roses for Universe Entertainment.
Donnie Yen Ji-dan, who co-directed The Twins Effect and succeeded in transforming the fresh-faced pop duo into convincing action heroines, is lined up to helm the film along with up-and-coming female director Barbara Wong Chun-chun. Wong first made her mark with the award-winning documentary Women's Private Parts - a part-humorous, part-serious look at Chinese women's sex lives - and followed it with the surprise-hit comedy Truth Or Dare: 6th Floor Rear Flat earlier this year.
'Donnie won't just be directing the action sequences - he'll be involved in the entire film - but we thought we also needed a female sensibility,' says the film's producer Carl Chang, explaining the unusual pairing.
Chang was one of the producers on The Twins Effect while still CEO of Albert Yeung's Emperor Multimedia Group. He left EMG this summer to set up his own production company, Virus Productions. Black Roses is his first project as an independent producer.
Described by Chang as a combination of Austin Powers and Batman, the film is loosely based on a series of Hong Kong films from the late 1960s, about a costumed female crime-fighter, the 'Black Rose'. The first of these, directed by Chor Yuen in 1965, features a pair of orphaned sisters who become modern-day Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich to help the poor and leaving a black rose as their calling card. Jeffrey Lau Chun-wai directed an award-winning send-up of the genre in 1992 - 92 Legendary La Rose Noire - which starred Fung Bo-bo and Wong Wan-si as the eccentric superheroines.
In this latest version which starts shooting next week, a former Black Rose played by Teresa Mo Shun-kwun - who also starred in Lau's film - sets up a training camp for the future generation of crime fighters. Ekin Cheng Yee-kin, who played the chief vampire slayer in The Twins Effect, will also star as the girls' sidekick. As the film is being set up as a Hong Kong-China co-production, the cast also has to feature a mainland actor and Chang spent this week in Beijing and Shanghai searching for an appropriate baddie.