Classic tale to hit theaters in July

A poster for The Magic Brush Photo: Courtesy of Yingxing Tianxia Entertainment

3D animated film The Magic Brush, created with technical support provided by The Walt Disney Company (China), voiced by the same crew who dubbed the Chinese version of Kungfu Panda and to be distributed by the China Film Group Corporation, is scheduled to hit domestic screens on July 25.

The film is an adaptation of the widely-know Chinese fairy tale Ma Liang and his Magic Brush (shenbi maliang) written by the late Chinese writer Hong Xuntao.

In the story, an immortal moved by the dedication of Ma Liang, an orphaned boy who practices drawing everyday despite having to work all day to support himself, gives the boy a magic brush with which allows anything he draws to become real. With his magic brush, the youngster goes about helping the less fortunate while taking on the bad guys.

Having been translated into several other languages and regarded as a treasure of Chinese children's literature, the story was first animated in 1955 by the Shanghai Animation Studio as The Magic Pen. It soon became the first Chinese animated film to win international awards.

In the new version, Ma Liang is drawn as a cute chubby kid while the art direction of the film resembles traditional Chinese ink wash paintings.