Starring Peter O'Tooleas Relic Sam Neill as Nichol Sun Li as Little Tiger Luke MacFarlane as James Tony Leung Ka Fai as the Bookman Kenneth Mitchell as Edgar Gao Yun Xiang as Wang Ma
Director
David Wu
Writers
Barry Pearson, Raymond Storey
Producers
Raymond Massey, Anne Tait,
Barry Pearson
Executive Producers
Arnie Zipursky, Tiger Hu,
Han Sanping
Developed with the assistance
of
Telefilm Canada
COGECO
Shaw Rocket Fund
Astral Media - The Harold Greenberg Fund
and
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Story idea from an opera by
Chan Ka Nin & Mark Brownell
Produced by Tapestry New Opera Works
Just before the cameras roll, the IRON ROAD cast and crew hold a traditional Chinese ceremony to invoke good luck for production by burning joss sticks, and offering a suckling pig and other delicacies to the film gods. Pictured are: Kate Luoshan, Arnie Zipursky, Luke MacFarlane, Peter O'Toole, director David Wu, Raymond Massey, Sun Li, Cinematographer Attila Szalay, and stunt choreographer Paul Rapovski.
Sun Li [Little Tiger] with the costume designer Maya Mani (right)
Peter O'Toole as the dissolute Mr. Relic with director David Wu
a story of disguise and forbidden love,
set against the building of the railroad
This is the story of three lives brought together in the high mountains of the west.
Lured by the myth of "Gum San", the Gold Mountain where fortunes are made, thousands
of desperate Chinese workers leave their homeland with a dream – to make their fortune in
North America by laying a coast-to-coast railroad through the treacherous mountain passes.
They learn that railroads only bring fortune to the few. They learn that building a railroad
means explosives and iron, rock and wood. Every foot is purchased with muscle and sweat.
Every mile is bought with courage, fear, and death.
The Canadian Pacific Railway, completed in 1885, was the last of the great iron roads
built in North America and left behind a mythology that lives today as part of our heritage.
Iron Road is the story of the hard-won triumph of a Chinese street urchin named Little Tiger,
whose quest for her long-lost father takes her from a fireworks factory in China to a remote
construction camp in the Rockies. She falls in love, survives prejudice and treachery,
and achieves a bittersweet fulfillment of her quest.
It’s the story of the transformation of James Nichol, the irresponsible son of a railroad
tycoon, a night traveler without a star, into a man of character and purpose.
And it's the story of a Book Man, the Chinese overseer of Little Tiger's crew -- proud, scarred,
a rebel hunted down by his enemies, struggling for revenge in that perilous world.
Their story is a window into the neglected history of how Chinese workers helped forge the
railroad that held Canada together.
It begins in Southern China in a fireworks factory where Little Tiger ekes out a living, disguised
as a teenaged boy. A handsome North American playboy named James Nichol is about to walk
into her life and change it forever.
The IRON ROAD story
It's 1882 and Alfred Nichol, the tycoon building the railroad through the massive Rocky
mountains, faces bankruptcy! His banker, George Grant, would call his loans, except that
his daughter is crazy about Nichol's playboy son, James.
Desperate, Nichol dispatches James to China to hire a crew of "Chinks" to blast a track through
the rock, at rock-bottom wages.
When James arrives, he’s accosted by a street urchin nicknamed ‘Little Tiger’, whose fierce
ambition is to get to North America, where his father died mysteriously, working on the railroad.
In a fight with a Chinese gang lord, Little Tiger saves James's life. James is grateful and agrees
to hire the kid on his crew sailing to the new world.
He never suspects the truth: that Little Tiger is actually a beautiful young woman who has
disguised herself to work in a man's world … and that she's falling in love with him!
As their railcar approaches the camp, Little Tiger sees grave-markers along the track – signs of
the Chinese who have died on the cliffs. And once they arrive, she’s in for more shocks: the white
bosses are racists, the work is back-breaking, and her tyrannical Chinese boss, The Book Man, is
involved in some kind of scam to pocket the wages of the dead Chinese workers.
At the same time, her attraction to James mounts until, under the moon at a secret mountain pool,
she decides to reveal her secret to him.
When the Book Man and his cohorts discover that Little Tiger is about to expose their scam, they
plot a fatal "accident" for the kid on the sheer rock face.
Now everything is at stake -- Little Tiger's life, James's love for her, and her search for the truth
about her father.
BEIJING -- Lensing has begun on a Chinese-Canadian
co-production in China's Hengdian Studios,
a love story set against the building
of the railroad through the Rocky Mountains,
starring rising
thesp Sun Li, Peter O'Toole, Sam
Neill, Tony Leung Ka Fai and
Luke MacFarlane.
Helmer is David Wu.
"Iron Road" will be a feature
pic and a two-part mini-series and will
shoot in China for five weeks
and British Columbia for two weeks. It
is the first film in 22 years to be made
under the China-Canada
film co-production treaty. Producer Raymond
Massey said lower production
costs in China
allowed him to do a lot
more with the budget than it would in
the West.
"But the main reason we're shooting
like this is because this is a natural
co-production between
the two countries. It's a chapter of Canadian
history that hasn't been told and in a
way it's our
apology to China for what happened,"
he said by telephone from Hengdian.
Sun Li, who starred
in "Fearless" and "Jade
Goddess of Mercy", plays a street
urchin named
Little Tiger, and is the character on
which the drama of the whole pic hinges.
Helmer David Wu began
his career in China as John Woo's
editor and among his credits are
"Merlin's Apprentice", "Son
of the Dragon" and "Plague City-
Sars in Toronto".
Pic was inspired by an opera by Chan Ka
Nin and Mark Brownell, and scribes on
"Iron Road"
Screenwriters were Barry Pearson
and Raymond Storey.
It is scheduled for feature release in
Asia and Europe, and broadcast on CBC
(Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)
Network in 2008.
As well as Massey, other producers include
Anne Tait, Barry Pearson and
Zhao Haicheng.
Executive prods are Arnie Zipursky,
Han Sanping, Massey and
TigerHu.
Worldwide distribution is by Alchemy
and CCI Releasing.
LONDON - Peter O'Toole
and Sam Neill will star in "Iron
Road," a television miniseries and
feature film
about the building of the North American
transcontinental railroad.
The romantic action-adventure sees a poor
Chinese railroad worker become romantically
entwined
with the son of a Yankie railroad tycoon.
"Iron Road" is produced by Mainland
Productions and Iron Road Productions,
in association with the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and
with the participation of the COGECO Program
Development Fund.
Further coin came from Shaw Rocket Fund
and the Canadian Television Fund.
London-based Alchemy Television is distributing
in all territories other than China and
Canada.
By Laurel Smith, Staff
reporter Kamloops is
riding the rail to the little screen.
In June, the Kamloops region will
be the central focus of a CBC two-part
miniseries and movie,
booked to be aired in 2008. The
$10-million Chinese-Canadian
co-production, titled Iron
Road,
will feature several local areas
and the historic 2141 steam-powered
train. Iron Road,
written by Barry Pearson
and Raymond Storey,
is the first Canadian-Chinese co-production
in 22 years.
The story, inspired by an opera
by Chan Ka Nin and Mark Brownell,
is one of love and the
construction of the railroad in
the 1880s.
Actress Sun Li
plays the part of Little Tiger,
a street urchin dressed as a boy,
who falls in love with
a railroad tycoon's son, James (Luke
MacFarlane).
Other stars include Peter
O'Toole, Sam Neill (who
will be in Kamloops during filming),
and
Chinese heart-throb Tony
Leung Ka Fai.
There is the possibility of 65 extras
needed per day for 14 days, according
to the Thompson-Nicola
Film Commission, and an estimated
30 to 40 local hires as crewmembers
over a two-week period.
Part of the movie will be filmed
in China for five weeks, and in
B.C. for another three weeks.
Vicci Weller, executive director
of the Thompson-Nicola Film Commission,
has been scouting
locations for three months for the
movie around the Kelowna Pacific
Railroad between Armstrong
and Kamloops, Brodie Loop, and Razor
Mountain.
Kettle Valley Railroadbeds, tunnels and cliffs
were all inspected by Weller, who
said that
Kamloops is considered a prime location
for directors and producers due
to its short trip into
the wilds of Canada and beauty of
landscape. After taking numerous
photos of locations,
Weller uploaded them to a website
for Massey and Wu to peruse. Brenda
Pollock, operations
manager at the Kamloops Heritage
Railway, said some filming will
take place onboard the historic
2141 stream engine. Pollock
said a crew of four will
run the engine while filming
takes place,
and that there will be no change
to the regular schedule. She said
few demands had been made
from the director, except that a
few modifications had to be made
to the 1912 engine so it would
fit the look of a steam
train in the 1880s. And
he requested crewmen grow
mustaches and
beards and wear costumes
to suit the role of railroad men
in the 1880s. "We're all really
looking
forward to it and we are really
excited," said Pollack.
The shooting time onboard will take
six days, starting June 9. Anyone
curious to see the train
decked out, or catch a glimpse of
the movie set, can still purchase
tickets for the Armstrong Explorer.
which travels from Campbell Creek
to Armstrong and back.
Iron Road , a miniseries focusing on the
Chinese experience of building the CPR
railway,
is being directed by long-time John Woo
collaborator David Wu.
SHANGHAI–It's a story that begins with
a photo. The iconic image of the Last
Spike–
the final piece of the transcontinental
Canadian Pacific Railway, hammered into
place
back in 1885–has come to symbolize humanity's
tenacity and innovation in the face of
seemingly insurmountable challenges.
But as historians will attest, it is a
controversial image. Though the railroad
was built
largely on the backs of Irish, Chinese,
and Native labourers who sweated, starved,
and
died in their thousands to complete the
coast-to-coast line, their full stories
have long
been excluded from official versions of
the project's history.
Iron Road, a new miniseries due to air
on CBC in 2008, is an attempt to set us
straight
on this crucial piece of social history.
Inspired by an opera of the same name
by
Chan Ka Nin and Mark Brownell, the film
tells the story of a young Chinese woman
who
travels to Canada from southern China
in the 1880s to find work on the Canadian
Pacific
and ends up falling in love with the privileged
son of her railroad-tycoon boss.
"This is our way of saying sorry,"
said Raymond Massey,
one of the film's producers,
in an interview on-set in China. Massey,
who hails from Vancouver, has been with
the
project for the past year, initially helping
to raise the $10 million budget and now
guiding
the film through the potential minefield
of a largely China-based shoot. The project
is being
directed by long-time John Woo collaborator
David Wu and stars Peter O'Toole
and Sam Neill,
as well as a host of well-known Canadian
and Chinese actors.
Iron Road is breaking ground not just in terms of its content but also because it is the first
China-Canada co-production in 20 years.
Anne Tait, another of
the film's producers (and who first optioned
the rights to the story
seven years ago), remembered pitching
the idea to CBC: "The executive there
said, 'I've
been waiting ever since I took this job
for some independent producer to come
in and say
they want to do this story. We were hoping
it would be a Chinese writer, Chinese
producer,
but it isn't, so let's talk.'"
Appropriately enough for a film about
monumental struggles and the clash of
cultures, making
Iron Road has been an obstacle course
for its production team, particularly
the Canadian side.
For Massey, the differences between shooting
in Canada and China have made every day
a
challenge, even on the well-known Hengdian
Studio back lot, the biggest
filmmaking facility in
China. Controlling noise on-set has been
a particular problem.
"I lost it one day," recalled
Massey, 23 days into the 30-day China
shoot. (The final 11 days of
filming took place in B.C. in early June.)
"I walked onto one of the other sets
shooting here and
screamed at them, 'I have Peter O'Toole
over here, and this is completely unacceptable
that I
have come halfway round the world with
my crew.' I just totally lost it. They
were standing there
terrified, wondering who was this lunatic.
But I felt a lot better."
There are upsides to working so far away
from home, and not just the local food,
which Massey
described as "amazing". "Daily
shooting costs here are one-tenth of what
they would be back in
Canada. If we had shot the whole film
back there, this film would have cost
us 25 or 30 million dollars."
Iron Road also stars Canadian
actors Kenneth Mitchell,[from
the NBC series Jericho] Serge
Houde,
Luke MacFarlane,[from the ABC
series Brothers and Sisters] and Ian Tracey [star of Intelligence
and Da Vinci's Inquest
on CBC] as well as rising Chinese
female star Sun Li, from
Jet Li's Fearless, as Chinese labourer
Little Tiger.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
IRON
ROAD STARRING
SUN LI, PETER O'TOOLE, SAM NEILL,
TONY LEUNG KA FAI and LUKE MacFARLANE
SHOOTING IN CHINA and CANADA
DIRECTED BY DAVID WU
HENGDIAN, CHINA, April
20th, 2007 – Principal photography begins
today on the feature film
and 2 part miniseries Iron
Road, a love story set against
the building of the railroad through
the Rocky Mountains, starring Sun Li,
Peter O'Toole, Sam Neill, Tony Leung Ka
Fai and
Luke MacFarlane, directed by David Wu.
The romantic action-adventure
will shoot April 20 to June 20 -- in China
for five weeks and
in British Columbia for two weeks.
James Nichol, the privileged
son of a railroad tycoon, comes to China
in the 1880s to recruit
cheap workers to finish his father's railroad
and save him from bankruptcy. There
he meets a
Chinese street orphan nicknamed Little
Tiger who's long been disguised as a boy,
in order to
survive. The kid yearns to leave
her job as a sweeper at a fireworks factory
to pursue her dream –
a better life in "Gold Mountain"and her
quest for the truth about her father's
death.
Little Tiger is in for
some shocking surprises when she arrives
at the railroad construction camp,
deep in the mountains of British Columbia.
She endures treachery, racist prejudice,
and a plot
to kill her on the cliff face. But
what changes her forever is that she falls
in love with James.
Their love defies the taboos of both their
worlds and puts everything at stake for
the feisty Little Tiger.
Chinese star Sun Li (Fearless,
Jade Goddess of Mercy) plays Little
Tiger, the intrepid street urchin;
Peter O'Toole (Venus, Lawrence
of Arabia) plays the alcoholic recruiting
agent who teaches her
English; Sam Neill (The Piano,
The Tudors,Jurassic Park)
portrays the hard-driving railroad tycoon,
Tony Leung Ka Fai (Lost in Beijing,
The Lover), is Little Tigers' demanding
boss, and Luke MacFarlane
(Brothers and Sisters, Kinsey) plays
the tycoon's irresponsible but engaging
son.
Director/editor David
Wu directed Merlin's Apprentice, Son
of the Dragon, Plague City-Sars in Toronto and the award-winning TV movie The
Snow Queen for the Hallmark
Channel David began his career in
China as John Woo's editor.
Inspired by an opera by
Chan Ka Nin and Mark Brownell, Iron
Road is written by Barry
Pearson and
Raymond Storey. The story is a window
into the dark and neglected history of
how Chinese workers
helped forge the railroad that held Canada
together, and is a tribute to their efforts.
It is scheduled for
broadcast on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation) Network in 2008.
The production is shooting
at the magical 200-hectare period studio
location, Hengdian, nicknamed
"Chinawood," nestled in the hills of southern
China, and also in the Okanagan valley
in B.C.'s
Rocky Mountains, above Kamloops and Kelowna.
Directed by tri-lingual
David Wu, Iron Road is
produced by Raymond Massey, Anne Tait,
Barry Pearson
and Zhao Haicheng, with Arnie Zipursky,
Han Sanping, Raymond Massey and Tiger
Hu serving as
executive producers.
The film is being distributed
worldwide by Alchemy and CCI Releasing.
Iron Road
is a ground-breaking Canada
- China co-production, produced by
Mainland Productions and
Iron Road Productions in association with
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,
with the financial
participation of the COGECO Program Development
Fund, the Shaw Rocket Fund and the
Canadian Television Fund created by the
Government of Canada and the Canadian
Cable Industry
