One of the world’s great true-life train heist stories is set to return to the big screen in China. Filmmaker DaMing Chen and veteran producer Chris Lee have partnered to develop a feature adaptation of James Zimmerman’s acclaimed nonfiction book, The Peking Express: The Bandits Who Stole a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China.
The new film, like the book, will recount the improbable saga of a 1923 incident once known as the “Lincheng Outrage,” which was sparked when Chinese bandits raided a luxury express train bound for Beijing and took over 300 international hostages — captivating the world and stirring up a six-week geopolitical showdown. A subject of popular fascination a century ago, the event inspired no less than Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 romance/adventure classic Shanghai Express, starring Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong, as well as two later Paramount Pictures remakes.
Zimmerman’s book is the result of extensive research in Chinese and international archives. It was published to wide acclaim last year, with The New York Times naming it an “Editors’ Choice” and the Financial Times writing, “So extraordinary are the events recounted in The Peking Express that it reads like fantasy…yielding a captivating story of robbery, murder, hostages and intrigue.”
Zimmerman describes his story thus: “Shanghai, 1923. A sleek blue luxury train departs from China’s cosmopolitan port city and heads into the country’s lawless heartland. Waiting to attack are one thousand heavily armed bandits, disgruntled ex-soldiers led by a charismatic 25-year-old rebel who is dead-set on freeing his province from the yoke of a brutal warlord. His audacious plan is not just to rob the train but to capture its rich and famous passengers, using them as bargaining chips to force a weak Chinese government to grant him autonomous control over his native soil. His raid on the Peking Express will…
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