French film director Jean-Jacques Annaud talks about his latest film, Wolf Totem, during an interview in Beijing on Feb 3.[Photo/Agencies]

"Yes, it's an excellent story. I love it. But, sorry, it's too hard to adapt it into a movie," was the typical refrain that Zhang Qiang, deputy president of China Film Group Corp, got from Chinese directors when he made the rounds to pitch the project.

Zhang's company had bought the novel's copyrights for adaptation into a movie soon after the book was published.

It is not surprising that Chinese directors turned down the project. Few Chinese movies have featured wolves as the main subject. Also, it is well-known in the industry that animals and children are the most difficult subjects to shoot.

The Warrior and The Wolf, a 2009 romance-action movie starring American actress Maggie Q, used six wolfhounds from Nanjing, instead of real wolves.

The Grey, a 2011 American thriller, relied on computer technology to depict attacks by a pack of killer wolves.

"But our movie needed real wolves," says Wang Weimin, the producer.

The multiple-award winning Annaud, known to Chinese fans for his animal-themed blockbusters The Bear and Two Brothers, was the first choice when the producers decided to look outside China for someone to direct the film.

When the French filmmaker received a copy of Wolf Totem, he was reading the screenplay of Life of Pi, which earned Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee his second golden statue at the Academy Awards in 2013.

Annaud decided to take up the challenge after he had finished reading just one-third of Jiang's book.

The director, who is also a naturalist, picked around 40 wolf pups and spent three years raising them.

Since these wolves' first sight after birth was not of their biological mothers but humans, they could be expected to feel more comfortable with them.