German director Christian Alvart first broke out with the stylish and twisted serial killer procedural Antibodies. The success of that film was enough for America to take note and the filmmaker was quickly attached to a number of Hollywood films, two of which –  the deep space horror film Pandorum and supernatural thriller Case 39 – were released the same year, 2009.

Despite both those films being largely great genre pieces (Pandorum particularly), neither were considered hits at the domestic box office and Alvart’s American career was suddenly stymied.

Similar to the trajectory of Nicolas Winding Refn following his own disappointing first American film, Fear X,  Alvart retreated back to Europe where he kept working in his native Germany directing a number of hit films including the true-crime thriller Bank Lady and the action film Tschiller: Off Duty. 

Alvart’s production company, Syrreal Entertainment, has also been successfully inking deals with various funding partners to produce genre pictures. The latest of these is with China, considered the most important and fastest growing foreign market in the world at the moment (the last I heard had 15 new movie screens a day being erected there). Jiabo Culture has partnered to produce Alvart’s next directorial effort, an ambitious fantasy adventure film, The Fox Mission.

The official synopsis is as follows:

A nine-tailed blue fox is sent from the Spirit Mountain to the human world to kill the evil emperor.

Said to be steeped in Chinese mythology, Alvart will shoot the film in both Beijing and Berlin this autumn.

Besides The Fox Mission, Syrreal Entertainment will release the science fiction thriller SUM1 (directed by Christian Pasquariello) starring Game of Thrones‘  Iwan Rheon later this year.