Ivanhoe Pictures, Sharp Independent Pictures To Produce Film About Successful Female Baccarat Player

Ivanhoe Pictures, a division of SK Global and the production company behind Crazy Rich Asians, has teamed with Jeffrey Sharp of Sharp Independent Pictures to produce The Baccarat Queen (working title), a film about Cheung Yin “Kelly” Sun, the skilled Baccarat player who is considered the most successful female gambler in modern history.

Based on Michael Kaplan’s Cigar Aficionado article, The Baccarat Machine (which is also Sun’s nickname), the predominately English-language film will feature Asian characters for the global market.

The film will tell the true story of Sun, a young Chinese woman who turns a painstakingly developed talent and obsession for payback into one of the most ingenious legal gambling runs ever documented. Over the course of less than a year playing baccarat in major casinos around the world, Sun amasses winnings in the 10s of millions of dollars. With major casinos conspiring to bar her from their properties, Sun eventually partners with the international “King of Poker” Phil Ivey in order to take down the system through subterfuge, ingenuity, and pure daring.

Ramo Law brokered the deal on behalf of Sun, while Kaplan was repped by Global Lion Intellectual Property Management and Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp.

Sharp and SK co-produced the Stephon Marbury biopic My Other Home, written and directed by Larry Yang, for Huayi Bros and Hairun Pictures in China, and up next have the drama Stride, written by Neville Kiser and Sophia Pan with Arvin Chen set to direct.

View this article at Deadline.