Netflix buys rights to China’s biggest sci-fi movie
BEIJING: China’s biggest sci-fi movie, The Wandering Earth, is set to be translated into 28 languages and released in 190 countries after Netflix bought the rights to the blockbuster.
As of this weekend, it has turned out to be the biggest movie of the year worldwide, raking in 4.3 billion yuan ($641 million) since opening on February 5, the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday, state media reports said.
It is also the second-highest grossing film of all time in China after Wolf Warrior II, a nationalistic action film released in 2017 which earned over 5.6 billion yuan.
The film, which received positive reviews from both Chinese and international critics, is based on China's Hugo Award Winner Liu Cixin's story of the same name.
The film tells the story of “the frantic mission to save the planet from being devoured by the sun by installing engines on the Earth to bring the Earth out of the solar system and find a new home in the galaxy,” China Daily reported.
If the premise sounds fantastic, so has been the response and the box office, which has kept ringing since the movie was released earlier this month.
“Its special effects are widely deemed as on par with some Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters, a rare achievement of a Chinese movie,” Xinhua news agency said.
“Produced with a reported cost of $50 million, the film took two years for post-production and special effects work undergoing more than 3,000 conceptual designs,” the report said.