Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou may be making the move to a big studio feature.  Per Heat Vision, the director behind martial arts epics like Hero and The House of Flying Daggers and the incredible opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics is in talks to helm an adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s spy novel The Parsifal Mosaic for Universal Pictures.  Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are producing the film, which revolves around a U.S. intelligence agent who, after witnessing the death of his KGB double agent lover, later sees her alive in Rome.  He subsequently sets out to discover the truth behind the conspiracy, which involves a mole named Parsifal.  Ludlum, of course, is the author behind the popular Bourne Identity series of books, and David Self (Road to Perdition) penned the screenplay adaptation.

Yimou’s last feature film was the big-budget Chinese epic The Flowers of War, starring Christian Bale.  He’ll likely be putting his own stamp on The Parsifal Mosaic, as THR’s report adds that the next step is finding a writer to work with the filmmaker.  Read the synopsis of the book after the jump.

Here’s the synopsis for Robert Ludlam’s The Parsifal Mosaic:

Michael Havelock’s world died on a moonlit beach on the Costa Brava as he watched his partner and lover, double agent Jenna Karas, efficiently gunned down by his own agency. There’s nothing left for him but to quit the game, get out. Then, in one frantic moment on a crowded railroad platform in Rome, Havelock sees Jenna. Racing around the globe in search of his beautiful betrayer, Havelock is now marked for death by both U.S. and Russian assassins, trapped in a massive mosaic of treachery created by a top-level mole with the world in his fist: Parsifal. [Amazon]