Australian Craig Rosenthal and writing partner Emmo Xu have been commissioned to write Lost in America, a comedy that follows a dysfunctional Chinese family on a road trip across the US to deliver their daughter to college in California.
The project will be produced by a new joint venture between Jeff Sharp’s Story Mining & Supply and Ivanhoe Pictures to create a slate of China-targeted movies.
Sharp, whose credits include Boys Don’t Cry, You Can Count on Me, Nicholas Nickleby and Proof, is backed by filmmaker and financier Jim Kohlberg. The LA-based Story Mining & Supply produces the Outlander TV series.
Development of Lost in America will be overseen by SMS’s Jennifer Hatton and Ivanhoe’s Kelly Carmichael and Hong Kong-based Kat Lee, who heads development and production in Asia.
Rosenthal, who has directed shorts and TVCs, told IF he hopes to direct the film but that hasn’t been decided yet. He and Xu collaborated on the short Shanghai Love Market, set in the city’s Peoples' Park where each weekend parents hang posters to match-make their unwed children.
The short screened at Flickerfest and numerous fests in cities including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Palm Springs, Tokyo, Rome and Singapore.
The duo hopes to develop the short into a feature, the tale of a dutiful son who returns home to China from the US with his American fiancée and battles with his tyrannical mother who has already found women whom she considers more suitable at the Shanghai marriage market.