The China-U.S. co-production Operation Doolittle is heading to Busan’s Asian Contents & Film Market, where Cappu Films will pitch the nine-part World War II espionage drama to global buyers.
The series stars Edward Zhang, Casper Van Dien and Jeff Fahey. It builds a fictional intelligence story around the real 1942 Doolittle Raid. An American officer carrying bombing plans is downed near China’s southern coast; a Chinese agent working inside the Japanese army and a local military doctor then try to recover the plans and shield the mission.
What buyers are being sold
Operation Doolittle has been recut for international audiences. It first aired in China earlier this year as River Sunset (Chang He Luo Ri), then was reworked into nine 60-minute episodes for the global market. The multilingual production moves between English, Chinese and Japanese.
- The package: nine parts, 60 minutes each, with a presold Chinese run.
- The cast: Edward Zhang, Casper Van Dien, Jeff Fahey, Ning Chang, Morning Chang and Zhang Songwen.
- The team: Zhao Jun wrote the series; Zhao Yilong and Shaun Piccinino direct; Han Sanping executive produces.
Zhao Jun frames the story as “a remarkable story of two countries coming together in wartime.” Cappu Films’ Janice Woo said the project offers broadcasters and platforms “courage and trust across divided loyalties” with an international cast.
Why the Busan pitch matters
Busan’s content market is a barometer for Asian IP seeking international distribution. Cappu is also using the market to sell Fox Hunt, led by Tony Leung Chiu-wai, alongside other festival-backed titles. For platform buyers and media planners, Operation Doolittle is a live test of whether a Chinese domestic success can be reframed as a China-U.S. co-production without losing either market.
The package carries some built-in de-risking: a completed local run, familiar war genre, American cast names and trilingual dialogue. The open question is positioning. A dual-perspective wartime story can read as accessible shared history or as politically complicated, depending on the market. Buyers at Busan will signal which reading wins.
What to watch next
The useful metric is not the trailer, but the type of buyer that steps in first: a global streamer, a regional broadcaster or a genre-focused platform. That first deal will show whether cross-border recuts can become a repeatable acquisition strategy for Chinese drama with international ambitions.
Source: Variety
