High-budget flop bows out of the summer heat

"At first, foreign heavyweights in making fantasy films couldn't believe we could handle this massive project," Yang Zhenjian said proudly before the film was released. "We convinced them with this and created something really special, which belongs only to the Oriental imagination."

The film is reportedly the first part of a trilogy, but all the titanic efforts were mocked after it hit Chinese theaters on Friday. People didn't buy the idea, and negative reviews poured in. Its score is so far only at 3.1/10 on Douban.com, an online movie review aggregation website. Internet users called it a "pathetic mess" that cannot resonate with the Chinese audience while others pointed fingers saying it is a copycat of Game of Thrones in its styling of characters along with other "weird designs." This forced its investors to angrily put out a statement on opening day, saying it is an "industry disgrace" for any organized and premeditated attacks on the film.

But during the creative team's six-year absence from China's film industry, many things have changed, including audience interests in the fantasy genre. Just as the heavily invested Zhang Yimou's The Great Wall (2016) and Cheang Pou-Soi's Monkey King 3 (2018) failed miserably at box offices, Asura apparently will not escape a similar fate.