Hong Kong's Mandarin Entertainment has lined up Jackie Chan and hot local singer-actor Nicholas Tse to star in The Sword Searchers, a $10m action adventure film to be directed by Tony Ching Siu-Tung.

The film, which will be set up as a co-production with a Chinese studio, is based on the popular Hong Kong weekly comic book, 'Magic Weapons', created by Tony Wong Yuk-Long. The comics, which merge historical accounts of China's warlords with legendary tales, have been published in several languages including English, Italian, Korean and Thai.

Tse is set to play the son of a noble clan chief in the film while Chan will make a special appearance as his father. An important female role has yet to be cast. Mandarin plans to start shooting the film in China this July.

Ching, one of Hong Kong's most renowned action directors, won an award at the Hong Kong Film Awards on Sunday for his action choreography on Zhang Yimou's martial arts epic Hero. He most recently directed action title Naked Weapon for Media Asia.

Meanwhile, Mandarin is currently producing another Hong Kong-China co-production, Lost Horizons, which started shooting in China's Yunnan Province last week.

The $1.4m romantic comedy follows three couples, from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Korea, on a holiday to a remote corner of Yunnan which the local government has christened 'Shangri-La'.

Derek Chiu is directing from a script by Aubrey Lam. The cast includes Hong Kong actors Francis Ng and Anita Yuen and Taiwanese actress Ruby Lin.

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