“We need more love stories, even if they have their ups and downs,” says Hong Kong-based producer Cora Yim, who is behind the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) in-development project “The Marriage Drive.” HAF runs takes place alongside the FilMart rights market.
The film is a simple-to-describe idea that writer-director Lawrence Kan has been kicking around and developing for some six years. The story involves a middle-class professional couple — he’s in the legal sector, she’s in finance — and tracks their childless, but not loveless, marriage over a period of 10 years from marriage to divorce.
Their professions are significant as both jobs bring them to Admiralty, the Hong Kong Island district that is the seat of the territory’s lawmaking, the center of administration of justice, high finance and culture. Over the past decade, Admiralty has also been venue for some of the city’s most dramatic socio-political twists and turns.
“I’d seen Lawrence’s ‘When C Goes With G7’ and last year watched ‘In Geek We Trust,’ the TV show that he made in Hong Kong. I was really impressed by its overall quality and depth, but especially by the strength of its dialog. That’s a rare thing,” says Yim. “So, on the strength of that I sought him out and found out what else he was working on.”
“I really liked his treatment for ‘The Marriage Drive’ and can see how it should be developed and can be delivered without an unrealistic budget,” says Yim. The stated budget is $1.3 million (approximately HK$10 million).
Yim is a seasoned executive with experience at Media Asia, Fox Network Group and Disney, who launched her independent producing career in 2019. In 2022 she jointly launched the Emerge Chinese development agency with Imagine Entertainment and Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA).
A Vancouver Film School graduate, Kan has been making film and TV since 2013 and recently completed his second feature film, “In Broad Daylight,” produced by the venerable Derek Yee.