The ever-voracious Miramax has pounced on Hero, the big-budget historical adventure whose post-production kept director Zhang Yimou away from Berlin this week.

The film is getting good word of mouth in Asia where it is being compared with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Miramax grabbed all rights in North America, Latin America, the UK, Australia/New Zealand, South Africa, Africa and Italy.

Hero is produced by Bill Kong's Edko and is represented in the rest of the world outside Asia by Good Machine International. Crouching Tiger was a Good Machine co-production co-written by Ang Lee's regular collaborator Good Machine co-founder James Shamus. GMI is also representing international sales on Zhou Yu's Train which is executive produced by Kong

The cast of Hero is headed by superstar Jet Li, Crouching Tiger discovery Zhang Ziyi, top Chinese star Jiang Wen and In The Mood For Love duo Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung.

The script was written by Zhang himself and tells the story of third century BC emperor Qin, who was assassinated by his own bodyguard.