NANJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Film producers from China, the United States and Britain started to shoot a new movie on the Nanjing Massacre Tuesday in Nanjing, the Chinese city that witnessed one of the worst Japanese war crimes during its occupation 70 years ago.

    "Purple Mountain", a film adapted from Iris Chang's international bestseller, "The Rape of Nanking", depicts the atrocities of 1937 and 1938 through the eyes of a middle-class Chinese mother and her daughter.

    Gerald Green, the American producer of the film, said he hoped it would have an impact on audiences similar to that of Steven Spielberg's Holocaust film Schindler's List.

    But as yet, the producers have not revealed who will be starring in the film, a question that has intrigued the public since plans for the new movie were announced last summer.

    Production of the film, by Jiangsu Cultural Industry Group based in Nanjing and Hollywood entertainment firm Viridian, will cost about 400 million yuan (51 million U.S. dollars), the Chinese producers said.

    The Nanjing Massacre occurred in December 1937 when Japanese troops occupied the then capital of China. An estimated 300,000 Chinese were killed, one third of the houses in the city were burned and more than 20,000 women raped.

    The movie will be based on "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II" by the late American Chinese writer Iris Chang. The book was the first, full-length English-language narrative of the atrocity to reach a wide audience. It became a New York Times Notable Book, and was cited by Bookman Review Syndicate as one of the best books of 1997.

    The screenplay was written by U.S. screenwriter William Macdonald, and Chinese director Luo Guanquan, who shot China's first film on the Nanjing Massacre in 1987, serves as the art guide for the movie.