Old story gets new twist

Zhao wanted the story, one of China's most popular folk tales, to be more understandable for the modern Chinese audience.

So, he teamed up with Hong Kong animator Amp Wong to co-direct White Snake, an animated film which will open across the Chinese mainland on Friday.

A Sino-US coproduction, the film also marks Warner Bros. Pictures' first animation feature to be made in collaboration with a Chinese partner-Light Chaser Animation, which is a Beijing-based company known for making animation features rooted in Chinese culture.

Warner's first coproduction with a Chinese studio was The Meg, a sci-fi epic which became a box office hit both in China and North America last year.

Speaking about the making of the film, Zhao says experts from the Hollywood studio helped them during the production process.

While the story has been adapted before, for a string of films and TV series, including the Angie Chiu TV hit, The Legend of White Snake (1992-1993) and Tsui Hark's 1993 classic film, Green Snake, the upcoming movie is the first to offer a convincing explanation for the events in the tale.

In this latest version, the story is set around 300 years before the Legend of the White Snake unfolds, a turbulent period in the late Tang Dynasty (618-907).

Then, a guoshi-a high-ranking official revered as a religious leader by the country's top ruler-forces villagers to hunt snakes as part of a secret scheme to make him immortal.

Bai, trained as a killer in a snake spirit clan, is assigned to assassinate him, but she fails and is rescued by Xu Xue, a villager who is destined to become Xu Xian in his next life.

Xu Xian is brave, smart and responsible, and to be with Bai-who believes a trans-species love is cursed-the young man trades his existence as a human with a fox to become a demon spirit.