JACKIE CHAN’S successful collaboration with Chinese studio Huayi Brothers will continue later this year with the production of two more films — with one set in New York and the other in the vast deserts of rural China.

    Hot on the heels of the success of “CZ12,” the action comedy which generated US$138 million at the Chinese mainland box office earlier this year, Chan will be producing and starring in the tentatively titled “Manhattan,” a film which sees the Hong Kong star playing “a dark hero” who “converses with love and hate,” according to a statement released at a press conference in Shanghai yesterday.

    Meanwhile, “Wolf Flag” (a tentative Chinese title for the second proejct) will see Chan star in a “mournful ode concealed in the stricken desert.” Both films are slated for release next year.

    The two projects were unveiled a day prior to the beginning of Shanghai’s annual international film festival.

    Part of a slate of upcoming projects that Huayi Brothers dubbed “The H Files,” the two Jackie Chan films are joined by the previously announced David Ayer’s “Fury,” the Brad Pitt-starrer co-produced by the studio and QED.

    Announced Saturday were new films by Taiwan’s Doze Niu (a historical dramedy with the Chinese title “Playground in the Army”), Hong Kong’s Mabel Cheung and Alex Law (the wartime-set drama “A Tale of Three Cities”) and mainland’s Gu Changwei (a contemporary romance “Literary Love in the Age of WebChat”).

    Huayi Brothers also announced its involvement as investor and distributor of the next installment of the hit homegrown animation franchise “Happy Goat and the Big Bad Wolf.”

    The studio confirmed release dates for its 2013 films, with Tsui Hark’s “Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragons” slated to open Sept. 28 and Kenneth Bi’s “Control” on Nov. 18.

    Feng Xiaogang’s “Personal Tailor” makes its bow Dec. 19. The comedy stars longtime Feng collaborator Ge You and rom-com queen du jour Bai Baihe.

    (SD-Agencies)