CAA to Represent Peter Chan’s We Pictures

By Becky Davis

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Creative Artists Agency (CAA) has signed with We Pictures, the production and distribution company founded by Hong Kong-born director and producer Peter Chan Ho-sun. It aims to boost the company’s footprint both in China and abroad.

Within , China will help We Pictures to develop new business partnerships and find new sources of investment and financing, as well as improve its branding and promotion, it said in a statement last Friday. Abroad, it will assist with international distribution and “mobilize the resources of the global film industry to connect We Pictures with more top-notch international content.”

Chan, who also has a production deal with Huanxi Media, is a two-time winner of the best director Golden Horse Award, first in 2006 for “Perhaps Love,” the first musical to be shot in China in decades, and again in 2008 later for the battle-filled historical drama “The Warlords,” starring Andy Lau and Jet Li. The two very different films demonstrate his versatility, with a career that has swung between between bigger-budget commercial fare – including 2013’s hit drama “American Dreams in China” – and Hong Kong romantic c
lassics like 1996’s “Comrades: Almost a Love Story” with Maggie Cheung. 

In the 1990s, Chan also forayed into Hollywood to direct “The Love Letter,” a romantic comedy with Kate Capshaw, Ellen DeGeneres and Tom Selleck. It was produced through DreamWorks.

CAA praised Chan for directing and producing works that “find a perfect balance between artistry and commercial interests.” His films “don’t just exhibit a literary temperament, they also give eye-catching performances at the box office and receive a lot of buzz,” it said.

In the early part of the new millennium he founded Applause Pictures and pioneered an attempt at multinational Asian co-productions. Titles produced included “The Eye,” “Jan Dara” and “One Fine Spring Day.”

When the Chinese industry opened up, Chan was quick to explore. As a producer, CAA said Chan had “created a new form of expression for Chinese-language youth love stories” with films like 2016’s “Soul Mate” and “This Is Not What I Expected,” a lighthearted romcom starring Takeshi Kaneshiro, an adorable bull terrier, and post-1990s-generation ingenue Zhou Dongyu, who plays the young chef who cooks her way into his cold heart.