Actress Li Bingbing attends a press conference on March 31, 2009 in Beijing, where she signed on to join the newly-launched 5510 Big Movie Plan (CRIENGLISH.com)

Ten blockbusters in five years! Investors of the "5510 Big Movie Plan" announced their ambition on Tuesday as they launched the Hong Kong-mainland project in Beijing.

The second "5" in the project's title stands for 500 million yuan ($73.18 million) as financial support for the project, according to Hong Kong film producer Jimmy Heung, whose company - Win's Entertainment - is one of the five investors.

"I'm very optimistic about the future of the mainland film market," Heung told reporters. "When I first came to Beijing a decade ago, a movie usually earned no more than 20 million yuan. Today it is ten times that number."

Four Beijing-based companies are cooperating with Heung in the 5510 Big Movie Plan.

Yet collaboration between the mainland and Hong Kong is not limited to investors. The Plan's first two films will also call upon talents from both sides, Heung said at the launching ceremony.

Lee Lik-Chi, a Hong Kong comedy director of such popular works as Flirting Scholar and The King of Comedy, will direct two comedies to be starred in by mainland actor Huang Xiaoming and award-winning actress Li Bingbing.

The 5510 Big Movie Plan is not the first joint effort of Hong Kong and mainland filmmakers. In February, Hong Kong director Peter Chan and mainland filmmaker Huang Jianxin launched a company named "Cinema Popular", through which Chan hopes to help cultivate more elites for the Chinese-language cinema.

(CRIENGLISH.com April 1, 2009)