BEIJING: With a $113-million budget, the most expensive Chinese film ever made has become a flop of historic proportions, pulled from theaters on its opening weekend after bringing in a paltry $7.3 million.
Alibaba Pictures’ special effects-heavy fantasy film “Asura” was intended as the first instalment in an epic trilogy inspired by Tibetan Buddhist mythology, part of a drive by authorities to promote works bearing elements of traditional Chinese culture.
The film cost 750 million yuan ($113.5 million) to make, state media said, and opened on Friday, but Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan said it only took in just over $7.3 million at the weekend.
By Sunday, the film’s official social media account posted a statement declaring that it would be removed from theaters as of 10 p.m. that night.
“We express our apologies to all those who wanted to but won’t have the chance to see it,” it said.
Most of China’s biggest blockbusters to date have been made with half the budget lavished on “Asura.”
The estimated loss of $106 million would make it the fifth-biggest flop in movie history worldwide, behind frontrunner “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas” which suffered losses of $125 million, according to data from website Box Office Mojo.
State media had touted the movie before it was released, with the China Daily hailing “Asura” as “the most hotly anticipated blockbuster of China’s competitive summer season.”
“It’s a very imaginative movie. We wanted the film to raise confidence in our own culture and train more domestic talent,” Yang Hongtao, chairman of Ningxia Film Group, one of the movie’s backers, told the paper ahead of Friday’s opening.
Six years in the making, the film was heavy on expensive visuals, featuring 2,400 scenes with special effects in its runtime of just 141 minutes, the paper noted.
Bankable Hong Kong actors Tony Leung Ka-fai and Carina Lau starred, while high-powered foreign talent — such as Oscar-winning Ngila Dickson, costume designer for the “Lord of the Rings” franchise — also took part.
Yet the film garnered a rotten 3.1 rating on Douban, China’s most influential user review platform.
“My god, it’s horrifying! It’s just a magnificent pile of excrement!” one user wrote.
Wildly different reviews on the country’s two largest ticketing platforms prompted a virulent retort from the movie’s production team, posted Friday to its social media account.
On opening day, “Asura” netted an 8.4 rating out of 10 on Alibaba-owned Tao Piaopiao. But on Maoyan, backed by Alibaba’s rival tech giant Tencent, reviewers had given it just 4.9.
The team accused Maoyan of using fake, paid reviewers to post 1-star ratings to artificially deflate the film’s score, calling the alleged move “despicable, foolish, and ludicrous.”
Many users dismissed the film’s team’s statement.
“It was garbage anyway,” one reviewer wrote.
China’s most expensive movie becomes epic flop
China’s most expensive movie becomes epic flop
- The film cost 750 million yuan ($113.5 million) to make, state media said
- The estimated loss of $106 million would make it the fifth-biggest flop in movie history worldwide
Producer Zainab Azizi hopes ‘Send Help’ will be a conversation starter
DUBAI: Afghan American film producer Zainab Azizi cannot wait for audiences to experience Sam Raimi’s new horror comedy “Send Help.”
In an interview with Arab News, the president at Raimi Productions kept returning throughout her interview to one central theme: the communal thrill of horror.
“I started watching horror from the age of six years old. So, it’s kind of ingrained in my brain to love it so much,” she said, before describing the formative ritual that still shapes her work: “What I loved about that was the experience of it, us cousins watching it with the lights off, holding hands, and just having a great time. And you know, as an adult, we experience that in the theater as well.”
Asked why she loves producing, Azizi was candid about the mix of creativity and competition that drives her. “I’m very competitive. So, my favorite part is getting the film sold,” she said. “I love developing stories and characters, and script, and my creative side gets really excited about that part, but what I get most excited about is when I bring it out to the marketplace, and then it becomes a bidding war, and that, to me, is when I know I’ve hit a home run.”
Azizi traced the origins of “Send Help” to a 2019 meeting with its writers. “In 2019 I met with the writers, Mark and Damien. I was a fan of their works. I’ve read many of their scripts and watched their films, and we hit it off, and we knew we wanted to make a movie together,” she said.
From their collaboration emerged a pitch built around “the story of Linda Little,” which they developed into “a full feature length pitch,” and then brought to Raimi. “We brought it to Sam Raimi to produce, and he loved it so much that he attached to direct it.”
On working with Raimi, Azizi praised his influence and the dynamic they share. “He is such a creative genius. So, it’s been an incredible mentorship. I learned so much from him,” she said, adding that their collaboration felt balanced: “We balance each other really well, because I have a lot of experience in packaging films and finding filmmakers, so I have a lot of freedom in the types of projects that I get to make.”
When asked what she hopes audiences will take from “Send Help,” Azizi returned to the communal aftermath that first drew her to horror: “I love the experience, the theatrical experience. I think when people watch the film, they take away so many different things. ... what I love from my experience on this film is, especially during test screenings, is after the film ... people are still thinking about it. Everybody has different opinions and outlooks on it. And I love that conversation piece of the film.”
