'The Wandering Earth' captures global attention

As the biggest movie of the year worldwide, China's sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth has caught attention of the world, including Hollywood.

US internet entertainment service Netflix announced on Feb 21 that it has acquired The Wandering Earth which will be translated into 28 languages and released in 190 countries.

The film is adapted from China's Hugo Award Winner Liu Cixin's story of the same name which tells 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.

The Wandering Earth has earned more than 4.3 billion yuan ($ 641 million) since its opening on Feb 5, the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday, making it the second-highest grossing film of all-time in China's box office records, second only to Wolf Warrior II, an action film released in 2017 which earned over 5.6 billion yuan.

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 film has a limited released in US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand since Feb 5, and has earned $3.9 million in US box office, according to Maoyan, a professional box office tracker.

Shanghai-based CMC Inc is responsible for the film's distribution in North American market. According to the film's official Sina Weibo account, The Wandering Earth broke Chinese film's five-year box office record in North American market.

It has received 7.6 out of 10 on IMDb, an online film database. A user named westleyma wrote that he read the novel 20 years ago and still remember the feelings after reading, when he saw the pictures on the screen, which had imagined thousand times, he was really moved.

Australian film critic Travis Johnson rated the film four stars out of five. He said that The Wandering Earth might be the best sci-fi movie of 2019 – "The Wandering Earth hits you with big, beautiful sci-fi ideas and concepts at a furious rate… if it's indicative of what's to come, the future looks sweet."

Director Guo Fan and his team flew to Los Angeles and New York on Feb 22 and 24 to promote the movie.

Guo said in Netflix's press release that he was glad that his movie can reach people from different parts of the world. Netflix will translate it into 28 languages, enabling more viewers to enjoy it regardless of geographical and linguistic differences.

Jerry Zhang, manager of Content Acquisition at Netflix, said that Netflix is committed to providing entertainment lovers with access to a wide variety of global content. "With its high-quality production and story-telling, we believe that The Wandering Earth will be loved by sci-fi fans around the world," he said.

Telegraph newspaper said that by acquiring the streaming rights of The Wandering Earth, Netflix is not only going after local markets, but also has been seeking to make Chinese drama more accessible to Western viewers.

Netflix has bought the international online rights to The Wandering Earth, but it's yet to set a date for the film. On the same date, Youku announced to get the film's streaming rights in China.

The first round running of The Wandering Earth was supposed to end on March 5, but it was announced on Feb 22 that the movie will run until May 5 in 3D-Imax and standard format and the ticket price will be reduced from Feb 25.

The film broke the box office record for Imax theaters in China by surpassing 300 million yuan to become the best-seller in Imax theaters in China beating US superhero movie Avengers: Infinity War.

"The idea of science and technology museum is to interpret science and technology and inspire the young people to get interested in this field. I think both producers of sci-fi films and The Wandering Earth are connected to our museum as we have holding the same responsibility to bury the seed of the science and technology to the teenagers," curator of China Science and Technology Museum Yin Hao said at a seminar in Beijing.

According to Yin, The Wandering Earth was collected by the museum in January which is the museum's first film collection.

"I think The Wandering Earth sits on a very important position of the development of China's sci-fi works, as it indicates China's sci-fi works has moved from the age of magazines and books to the era of films and television," Yin said.