EXCLUSIVE: US-based Story Mining & Supply Co (SMS) is teaming with director Pang Ho Cheung and Subi Liang’s Making Film Productions to develop and produce an adaptation of Zhang Youyou memoir Polaroid Stories.

Zhang’s forthcoming book follows a young woman who deals with her insecurities surrounding sex and relationships by taking a job assisting a famous photographer, who is capturing intimate pictures of couples on Polaroid film.

Pang and Liang brought the project to SMS and will produce with Jeffrey Sharp and Evan Hayes from the US-based comapny. SMS’s director of Asia, Jane Yu, will executive produce.

The team plan to develop the project with a US screenwriter for translation into Chinese.  

Village Roadshow Pictures Asia is in talks to join the project as co-producer and financier under its recently-announced strategic alliance with SMS.

Making Film Productions also produced Pang’s Aberdeen, one of two opening films at the Hong Kong International Film Festival tonight (March 24). The company was also behind Women Who Flirt for Huayi Brothers; Jason Kwan’s HAF project A Nail Clipper Romance; and Arvin Chen’s Grooms.

SMS was established by producers Sharp (Boys Don’t Cry) and Jim Kohlberg (The Music Never Stopped) last year to develop, finance and produce films and TV based on content sourced from authors and their publishers. Evan Hayes joined from Working Title Films in early 2013.

In the US, SMS is producing Starz/Sony TV series Outlander and David Lowery’s feature The Yellow Birds, based on Kevin Powers’ novel. The company is also developing a slate of projects for Asia.