Sony Online Entertainment Taipei and Shanghai Northstar are teaming up to create an online game for Stephen Chow's hit movie, Kung Fu Hustle.

The game will only be released in China, and it will be free to play... unless you wish to purchase extra lives and special items.

According to the press release, it's a sort of "classic fighting game."

Also, "in Versus Mode, eight players can go head to head in all out multiplayer mayhem."

To try to predict what is to come: here's an example of a casual, Tetris-like game developed by co-developer Shanghai Northstar called 无厘头快快 (Nonsense On Speed), which features some stock characters from Chow's movies:

But according to Joystiq, "the shots of this game [the Kung Fu Hustle one] that they showed us look pretty ... painful"

According to a Sony spokesperson, Chow's "an avid video game player, with a strong sense of game design."

Via Game|Life.