John Woo's highly anticipated romantic nautical epic "The Crossing: Part 2" has recently been announced for release on the 30th of this month.
Led by this prolific Hong Kong director, some heavyweights on and behind the screen have recently joined his promotion for "the Chinese Titanic" in Beijing.
Xu Fei was there at the promotional event and filed this report.
Reporter: Following the first installment released in 2014, the second part of the film continues to center around three couples and their intertwining love stories set in 1940s' Taiwan and Shanghai.
John Woo thinks his upcoming movie would demonstrate how love charms its way out of a disaster.
"The three relationships are all very representative of its type, which would greatly touch hearts and minds of audience members. Based in part on the true tale of the Taiping luxury liner that sank in 1949 near Taiwan, the feelings of love that arouse at the moment of the sinking of this Chinese steamer would exhibit its power and endurance."
With an all-star cast, which includes the Beijing-born actress Zhang Ziyi, Chinese singer- actors Huang Xiaoming and Tong Dawei, as well as heart throb Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武), John Woo's 3-D movie 's first installment reportedly earned around 32.4 million US dollars in box office last year.
Hong Kong veteran television actor with the TVB network Bowie Lam Bo Yee is also included in both the first and second installment. Acting a supporting role, he interprets his role in the upcoming movie.
"I act Peter Yuan, who has to co-star with actress Zhang Ziyi and Song Hye-kyo in many parts of the movie. I feel Peter is actually a poor guy, who has a history of misconduct allegations. Peter is a negative character who fails to recognize what are the things he should do."
Adding to audiences' anticipation is two heavy weight Chinese musicians' contributing to the production on two different theme songs for the Crossing 2.
Tayu Lo, referred to as the "Godfather of Taiwan Music", is one of them.
"John Woo is an old friend of mine for more than 30 years. But this is our first collaboration. When you hear the song, you would easily find that I don't sing from the beginning to end, but instead I technically use a mixture that contains bass' lead voice, children's chorus and even a soprano for the tear-jerking tragedy film."
In addition to Chuan-Yue-Xuan-Wo ("穿越漩涡") or literally translated into Struggling on Big Waves composed by Tayu Lo, there is another theme song, "If love is destined", or Jia-Ru-Ai-You-Tian-Yi in Chinese.
Being nicely named "poet of music", Li Jian also contributes his voice to this disaster-genre film by singing "If love is destined", which is reproduced from a Korean song of the same name with the lyrics rewritten by Li himself to this sentimental music.
The film is John Woo's first film project after his recovery from laryngeal cancer.
For Studio Plus, I'm Xu Fei.