Chinese media group buys rights to US media mogul's space comedy

LOS ANGELES - China's Tianying Media Group has just snapped up the rights to US media mogul Stan Lee's The Last Resort, a sci-fi comedy about a woman who inherits a quirky hotel on an orbiting space station.

"It's a great female-starring project," talent manager and executive producer Shari Kelton told Xinhua on Monday. "I'm proud of women's accomplishments. And I'm thrilled to be doing this project with China."

The deal is part of a new win-win formula that has emerged in recent US-China deals: Chinese production companies are hiring Hollywood screenwriters or buying American scripts to give the film a global appeal, then tweaking them with "Chinese characteristics" and producing them as Chinese movies or US-China co-productions.