Bruce Willis has signed on for Chinese second world war epic The Bombing, according to Variety.

Directed by Xiao Feng and set in 1943, the film explores the plight of the people of Chongqing as they are bombed by the Japanese. Willis plays a US fighter pilot who volunteers to help the locals learn how to fly in order to put up a defence.

Willis will reportedly shoot for eight days on the project, which has an estimated budget of $90 million, making the film one of the most expensive Chinese productions to date.



“We have an ancient culture with a long history and many stories, both fiction and non-fiction, to tell,” executive producer Yang Buting told Variety. “America has a relatively short history but you have a much greater technology in film. So we are trying to take the history of China and meld it with the modern technology of America to make a modern film that is of the highest quality.”

Willis is likely shoring up his popularity in China, where his action films GI Joe: Retaliation and The Expendables 2 made $54 million and $53 million respectively. He’s following in the footsteps of western stars like John Cusack and Christian Bale. Bale appeared in Zhang Yimou’s The Flowers of War, set during the Nanking massacre. Made with a budget of $100 million, that film was supposed to be the Chinese film industry’s bid for an Oscar and big American box-office takings. It failed to make the Oscar shortlist and flopped in the US on release, taking just over $311,000 during its limited run.



Courting Hollywood actors for Chinese productions is seen as an increasingly important means of cross-pollination between the US and Chinese film industries, as well as a way to dodge China’s foreign-film quota, which restricts the number of American titles distributed. China is expected to be the world’s largest cinema market by 2020, while the country’s biggest box office hit is an American film, Michael Bay’s Transformers : Age of Extinction.

