The Big Winner lived up to its name at the Whistler Film Festival on Thursday, as the romantic comedy was named one of four winning projects at the Whistler Film Festival China Canada Gateway for Film script competition.

The annual competition sees 12 Canadian scripts competing for the attention of Chinese producers, with the goal of matching potential projects with interested producers.

The Big Winner, written by Brian D. Young, produced by Lindsay Moffat and directed by Terry Ingram, was selected by Shanghai-based Hairun Film, which was represented at the festival by exec producer Victoria Hon.

Also finding a potential partner in China was Going Back to School, a coming-of-age story written by Earl Krieger and produced by Lulu Pan. That project was selected by Bejing Fashion Stars Film Co, led by CEO Wang Lutao.

And Shenzhen Jinqiangwei Film, led by its president, Zhang Jiaming, apparently could not decide between its top picks and instead chose two projects: Moon Palace, written and directed by David Weaver, and Emperors, written and produced by Brian Dick and Dylan Kingsford Petley of Gun Lake Pictures with executive producer Sacha McLean.

The Big Winner‘s Young said the film, which follows a lawyer finding unexpected romance and fortune while working on a real estate deal in China, was an almost spur-of-the-moment collaboration between Moffat and Ingram, hatched on a boat during a weekend retreat.

Now, the trio are looking to put plans in motion to build an up to $10 million picture that will likely shoot in China and finish in Canada, to take advantage of the strengths in both countries.

“I think Hairun is the perfect partner for this film,” Moffat told Playback Daily following the announcement. “We envisioned this originally, and that’s the plan right now, to shoot in China with some Canadian talent but mostly China crew and China talent, Canadian writer and Canadian director. So in that sense a coproduction, while handling post, visual effects and finishing here in Vancouver, where we do a North American style finishing, which I think is very helpful for an international sale. It also helps in China as well because the way that we finish films is very Hollywood.”