Barcelona based producers Zip Films are set to make the $15m Dancing With Strangers, which will be a co-production with the US, Germany and China and is set to star Chow Yun Fat.

Ankie Lau will write and direct the project about a Broadway dancer who returns to Germany and Hong Kong to find his roots. Shooting is scheduled to start in autumn 2010.

“We will work with German production outfit LauFilm on Dancing With Strangers, which will also receive backing from the US through New York-based GC Finance Group and from China,” Norbert Llaras, chief financial officer at Zip Films, told ScreenDaily.

The film is one of several projects Zip Films has lined up with venture capital fund GC Corporation. Zip sold a 25% equity stake in its company to GC who in turn will offer a revolving credit facility worth $23.5m for pan-European and transatlantic co-productions.

Other Zip Film-GC projects include the long-gestating $20m Betsy And The Emperor, starring Al Pacino as Napoleon, which is being co-produced with New York’s Killer Films and is set to shoot next year in the US and parts of Spain. “We are currently scouting locations on that project, including Majorca” Llaras said.