The cast of High School Musical performs at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. on Nov. 10, 2007. Disney plans to recruit a cast of unknowns for a Chinese version of the film. (Disneyland/Associated Press)

Disney is adapting its High School Musical movie, about a jock and a science nerd who join forces to win a school singing competition, for the Chinese market.

The clean-cut film, with its chaste romance and odes to positive thinking, has been an unstoppable force among North American youngsters.

The Walt Disney Co. plans to adapt, rather than translate, the film for the Chinese market, working with Shanghai Media Group and Huayi Brothers Media Corp., according to a statement from Disney released Sunday.

By working with Chinese partners, Disney can bypass China's annual quota of only 20 films by foreign studios and ensure wide release in the Chinese market.

The film, to be shot in Shanghai, will feature a cast of singing, dancing newcomers, like the original High School Musical, a TV movie originally released in 2006.

Disney High School Musical: China is scheduled for release in 2010.

Like the original, the Chinese version will centre on a basketball player lured into singing in a high school production. Disney manager Jason Reed told Variety that Disney had initially contemplated making martial arts the main sport in the film, until its Chinese partners pointed out that basketball is vastly more popular.

The director will be Chen Shizheng, who directed a 19-hour stage production of the classic Chinese opera The Peony Pavilion in 1999 and helmed his first feature, Dark Matter, in 2007.

High School Musical has been a big hit internationally, airing in more than 30 languages in some 100 countries. It has spawned two sequels, and a fourth instalment, starring none of the original cast, is on the way.

It will be Disney's third co-produced film in China after The Magic Gourd in 2007 and Trail of the Panda in 2009. Last week the Chinese government approved plans for a Disney theme park in Shanghai.