Los Angeles (IDN)- China's first
big-screen adventures in outer-space will soon be landing on Netflix.
The
global streaming giant has picked up U.S. and international online rights to The
Wandering Earth, the China's first sci-fi action film
produced at a Hollywood scale in The Qingdao Oriental
Movie Metropolis has
earned over $610 million at the Chinese box office.
Considered China's first major
science fiction movie, The Wandering Earth is directed by Frant Gwo and
stars Chinese action hero Wu Jing, the writer, director and star of Wolf
Warrior 2, the military action flick that earned a historic $850 million in
China in 2017.
The movie is an adaptation of a
short story by author Liu Cixin, whose novel The Three-Body Problem won
the Hugo Award in 2015 — China's first win of science fiction's highest honor.
The
film set the storyline against a backdrop of an epic project to propel the
planet out of the solar system on a 2,500-year journey in search of a new sun.
It focuses on a Chinese astronaut and his emotionally estranged son as they
join a global mission to prevent Earth from crashing into Jupiter.
“The movie is a majestic feast for the eyes
with massive production scale rarely seen in Mandarin films," Netflix said
in a statement Thursday. "Its postproduction and special effects work
spanned two years, undergoing more than 3,000 conceptual designs, and featuring
over 10,000 specifically-built props, while employing an impressive 2,000
special effects shots and a substantial amount of computer graphics shots,” the
company added.
“With its high-quality production and
storytelling, we believe that The Wandering Earth will be loved by
sci-fi fans around the world,” added Jerry Zhang, manager of content
acquisition at Netflix.
Netflix hasn’t said when the film will hit its
platform, and Deadline
reports that The Wandering Earth will be available in North
America, Australia, New Zealand, and Korea.