Coming off his Oscar win for The Fighter, Christian Bale must have had no time off, as his Chinese epic The 13 Women of Nanjing wrapped, overlapping with Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises production. We already got a look at two images from the next film from Hero director Zhang Yimou, but you can take a look at a new one above.
Film Business Asia via Anne Thompson at indieWIRE reports the production took 164 days and was “the director’s toughest yet.” Bale stars alongside Shigeo Kobayashi as an American priest named John “who takes refuge in a church with 13 prostitutes and a group of innocent schoolgirls during the fighting between Chinese and Japanese troops in 1937. Based on Yan Geling‘s novel The 13 Women of Nanjing, it’s been scripted by Yan and Liu Heng, and is said to be 40% in English, with the other 60% being in Mandarin.
The 13 Women of Nanjing is scheduled for release on December 16th, 2011 in China and no concrete word yet for the US. With a budget over $100 million, it marks the biggest yet for the country.
What do you think of this new look at the film? Are you excited to see Bale try something different?