Fortune Star, the new production company housed at News Corp's Star TV group, has unveiled its first projects made for the ancillary markets.

"I don't expect to unveil our theatrical slate until much nearer Mifed," said Fortune Star general manager Peter Poon. "We refuse to produce the kind of low budget pictures made on a marketing whim that are out of date by the films are released. Rather, we want to make the kind of quality films that necessitate a longer development phase and are worthy of the distribution network we are putting in place."

Meantime Fortune Star aims to generate some revenues from its TV movies slate. First off will be An Autumn Tale, a romance that starts shooting at the end of this month.

It will be followed by The Three Kings Of The Orient, a 90-minute picture about Bruce Lee, Jet Li and Jackie Chan that will make use of previously unseen material from Star's library and shoot from the third quarter. Martial Magic is another feature-length infotainment picture - about different martial arts in the US, Korea, Japan and Hong Kong - that will be made for TV and DVD with lots of extras and complementary material.

Fortune Star is already actively in business handling library rights to the two catalogues it has picked up or retrieved in the last couple of months. Its biggest asset is the 450-title Dickson M Poon catalogue, which boasts many of the best films starring Michelle Yeoh. It also has Asian rights to the Golden Princess library, which is handled internationally by Media Asia.

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