Racing to Develop Film of Chinese Detective Hero

Watched by a curious monkey while taking his morning tea, (he) notices the scavenger has a shiny treasure. He entices the animal to drop his new-found prize, a gold ring with a precious stone. Dried blood on the ring leads Dee to the discovery of a mutilation murder.

The above is a producer’s synopsis of a plot from the life of Judge Dee, a Chinese detective from the 7th-Century Tang Dynasty and a hot topic among Western film makers planning to make movies in China.

Screenplays have been commissioned by competing film makers hoping to make a Judge Dee movie as a major production with the People’s Republic of China, a la “The Last Emperor,” which was filmed in China and just collected nine Oscars (best picture, best director, etc.).

Judge Dee first became known in the West in the ‘50s with the publication of the first of 16 Dee detective novels by China scholar and Dutch diplomat Robert Van Gulik, who wrote 72 volumes about China in all. Van Gulik, who was still working on the Dee series when he died in 1967, based the detective on a real figure in Chinese history, Dee Jen-djieh.

Director Paul (“RoboCop”) Verhoeven is committed to direct one Judge Dee movie, now in development at Tri-Star, based on the Van Gulik novels.

The other Dee project is based on historical material about Jen-djieh, according to its would-be producer, Franco Giovale, who was associate producer of “The Last Emperor.”

Tri-Star approved plans for the Van Gulik Dee movie on the day after “Emperor’s” triumph at the Oscars, although the company had been negotiating for almost a year with Dee Productions, the independent company that brought Verhoeven and the Dee idea to Tri-Star.

The Tri-Star and Giovale projects are feuding, each claiming sole rights.

Dee Productions is two women, both would-be first-time executive producers: Rita McMahon, 38, a TV marketing consultant from New York, who optioned the Van Gulik novels and wrote summaries of them (including the synopsis at the beginning of this story) to help sell the movie to Tri-Star; and a French woman, Francoise De Leu, 45, who has worked as an art director on “many” French films, she said, including “My New Partner” and “The Perils of Gwendolyn.”

McMahon first optioned the Van Gulik books six years ago, after she had worked as a marketing consultant on two TV miniseries set in the Orient: “Marco Polo” and “Shogun.”

De Leu also tried to option the Van Gulik books and teamed up with McMahon when she learned the latter had the rights.

As it turned out, Verhoeven had an option on the books even before McMahon (“I have been in love with the Van Gulik books for 20 years,” the Dutch director said) and first pitched the idea to Hollywood studios in 1981.

But at the time, “Everyone was terrified of doing a picture in China with Chinese people,” he said. “There was a negative answer from every studio in town.”

This time, Verhoeven and the two women teamed up with producer Mike Wise (“Making Mr. Right”), who helped sell the package to Tri-Star.

A spokesman at the Shanghai Film Studio, which has an agreement to co-produce the Judge Dee movie with Dee Productions, said, “We are preparing for (the movie) now.” (The Shanghai agreement will not be completed, however, until Tri-Star officials have a chance to meet with the Chinese, after Tri-Star signs its deal with Dee Productions on July 11.)

Before Verhoeven directed “RoboCop,” a huge hit in the pop entertainment category, “Everybody in town turned us down on this project, except (Tri-Star production head Jeff) Sagansky,” said producer Wise.

“After ‘RoboCop’ was screened, everyone offered us a deal, but we decided to stay with Tri-Star,” he said.

As planned, Chinese workers at Shanghai will build the sets, make the costumes and work as crew members and extras, but Westerners will have the principal roles. There is talk of John Lone as Dee, but the writers’ strike has delayed completion of a script--by screenwriter Rospo Pallenburg (“The Emerald Forest”)--and, therefore, the casting process.

Verhoeven pitched the Dee idea to Tri-Star as “like ‘Star Wars.’ ”

Like “Star Wars”?

In the sense, Verhoeven explains, “that you are jumping, falling into another world, a place that looks like a different planet, even with the costumes and the way people behave. It is sometimes a little bit barbaric, because we are talking about 1,500 years ago.”

Elaborating on the “Star Wars” context, Wise speaks of “incredible battle sequences with the kind of weapons that we’ve never seen on the screen before, steel and metal objects used to kill or maim or injure that were actually used in Chinese warfare but that Western society has never seen.”

“It’s action, it’s violence and you do have sex,” De Leu said.

“It is not very erotic by our standards, but it does have eroticisms. Dee and his lieutenant do have love affairs. They have Chinese dancers, the flower women, who are very important to the stories.

“But we won’t be able to have erotic scenes with (People’s Republic) Chinese actresses,” she said. That would violate People’s Republic film standards.

Meanwhile, plans for the other Judge Dee project are under way at Giovale’s Rome-based RVC Productions.

In fact, Giovale claims that thanks to his experience on “The Last Emperor” and the contacts he has developed in China, he was given an “exclusive contract” to make Judge Dee in China by ChinaFilm, the government-run agency that oversees all film activity in China.

However, a spokesman at Shanghai Film Studio diplomatically disputed Giovale’s exclusivity claim. The spokesman stated that Giovale has an agreement with ChinaFilm, the Shanghai studio has an agreement with De Leu and group, and People’s Republic film authorities have no problem with the concept of two Judge Dees filming in China.

“Francoise De Leu has the copyright on the Van Gulik books, whereas Giovale is going to make a film on the original Chinese novel so there’s no problem,” the Shanghai spokesman repeated.

Likewise, an official with the Los Angeles office of ChinaFilm, Huilai Ping, said, “I don’t think China will care that much about who is the right guy, who is the right person, as long as they can produce the funds to co-produce the movie with China and as long as they can get the approval for the content from the Chinese government.”

Giovale said he has a consortium of Italian banks willing to finance his movie, as well as an unnamed partner in Britain for the project.

The director hasn’t been chosen yet, but it’s unlikely to be “The Last Emperor” director Bernardo Bertolucci. Giovale says, “Bernardo is interested in Africa now.”

Stressing that his project is just beginning, Giovale said that he has commissioned a script from Maine-based writer Jan Willem Vandewettering.

The prospect of a competing film doesn’t seem to fluster Giovale, who takes no small amount of credit for the success of “The Last Emperor.”

“I made ‘The Last Emperor,’ ” he said. “I had the idea, I started to talk to Bertolucci about it and I made all the negotiations with the Chinese. Thanks to Bernardo, it was marvelous.”

According to Giovale, his rights to make a Dee movie in China evolved this way: Before “Emperor,” he worked as the production manager of the NBC miniseries “Marco Polo” in China in 1981 and 1982, after which a Chinese vice-minister granted Giovale the rights to make three movies in China. Giovale said he asked to make “Judge Dee,” “A Man’s Fate” and “The Last Emperor.”

His first choice at the time, he said, was “Judge Dee,” “because I think is more commercial, more fantastic, an adventure with incredible visuals, but the Chinese wanted to make Judge Dee themselves because they suppose it too precious a project to give to a foreigner. They say, ‘No way, Franco. If you want, you can make “The Last Emperor.” ’ So I did ‘The Last Emperor.’ ”

Subsequently, Giovale said, he was given “the exclusive contract” to film “Judge Dee” by the president of ChinaFilm.

McMahon counterclaims that awareness of Dee, even in China, is so intertwined with Van Gulik’s characterization that it would be impossible for anyone else to make a Dee production without infringing on her rights.

Dee Productions has a trademark on the name Judge Dee in Europe and in the United States and in five languages, including Italian, she said. “China is the only country that does not follow international copyright law, so one could make a Judge Dee movie in China, but the film could not leave China.”

She noted that her option to make a movie from Van Gulik’s books extends to material translated by him. The estate has given Dee Productions the exclusive rights to make a movie, according to Van Gulik’s son, Dr. Thomas Van Gulik, an Amsterdam surgeon.

“My father took all the stories of the legend of Judge Dee and translated a few of those stories and got so fascinated by this figure that he started to write fiction around it, and make Judge Dee like a Sherlock Holmes,” Van Gulik said. “He gave Dee a whole character, his beard and his two assistants, the whole Dee concept.”

Giovale counterclaims that he is basing his movie on original research, which makes book rights or approval from Van Gulik’s family unnecessary.