Mandopop Ghost Month Musical 'Alishan Escape' Takes Shape With Veteran Disney Animator Aboard

An Australian hybrid-AI studio and an international production company are developing an original animated musical rooted in Taiwan's Ghost Month traditions, with a veteran Disney animator now on the project.

Red Empire Productions, based in Australia, and Organic Media Group — operating across Los Angeles, Taiwan and Australia — are developing Alishan Escape: A Mandopop Ghost Adventure, an animated feature that draws on Taiwan's Ghost Month customs, Buddhist philosophy, local Indigenous tribal cultures and Asian pop music, according to Variety.

The story follows an international pop star who travels to Taiwan to finish an unfinished song written by her late parents. During Ghost Month — the period in the lunar calendar when, by tradition, the gates of the underworld open and spirits walk among the living — she crosses into the world of the dead and must complete the song to return before her concert.

The project is a creative collaboration between Red Empire Productions founder and CEO Amie Casey and Organic Media Group co-founder Steve Chicorel. Chicorel, a UCLA MFA-trained screenwriter, producer and songwriter who has spent nearly two decades living in Taiwan, created the story, wrote the feature treatments and developed the lyrics and original songs for the film. Organic Media Group was co-founded by Chicorel and Kelly Mi Li.

The creative team has developed feature treatments for the first two films in a proposed franchise, plus a temporary soundtrack with lyrics and music by Chicorel. The plan, in other words, is for more than one picture.

Animator Greg Manwaring has joined the project. His credits span more than 35 years and include work on The Lion King, The Iron Giant, Pocahontas and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? — films that sit squarely in the hand-drawn animation tradition even as Alishan Escape takes a hybrid-AI approach to production.

Red Empire Productions and Organic Media Group are currently in discussions with a major studio's animation division regarding continued development of the franchise. Those talks are ongoing; no deal has been finalised.

The blend of Mandopop — the Chinese-language popular music that dominates charts across Taiwan, mainland China and Southeast Asia — with Ghost Month mythology gives the project an unusually specific cultural foundation. Ghost Month, observed in the seventh month of the lunar calendar, is a time when families offer food, burn incense paper and perform rituals to honour and appease wandering spirits. Folding that tradition into a musical about a pop star racing to finish a song before a deadline is a premise that does not closely mirror anything currently on the animated release calendar.

No release date, budget or further cast details have been announced.