The first installment of the much-anticipated 3-D production The Crossing, will be released nationwide on Dec 2.

The epic romance disaster movie, set in early 1949, boasts a glittering pan-Asian cast of 24 top stars, among them Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Song Hye-kyo, Huang Xiaoming, Bowie Lam, Tong Dawei and Masami Nagasawa.

A joint production between China, Japan and South Korea, the two-part feature-length production uses the romantic stories of three couples to narrate the tragic incident of the steamer Taiping.

During a voyage from Shanghai to Keelung in Taiwan, Taiping sank after colliding with a cargo ship, killing nearly all the 1,000 passengers and crew members onboard on Jan 27, 1949.

"I always wanted to shoot a romance film, something like Doctor Zhivago," says the movie's Hong Kong director John Woo, who is well-known for his Hollywood action blockbusters, such as Broken Arrow and Mission Impossible: II.

Woo reveals that the first time he heard the story of the Taiping from Taiwan scriptwriter Wang Hui-Ling (who wrote the script for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), he was deeply impressed by what he saw as a Chinese version of the Titanic sinking.

The Titanic, a British passenger liner, sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton in the United Kingdom, to New York.

Titanic the movie, directed by James Cameron and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, was a mammoth worldwide hit and broke box-office records in China in 1997.

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