The Spring Festival holiday is the prime time for the Chinese film market, when a large number of films compete for an audience who are more willing to buy tickets than at any other time of year. The Spring Festival holiday this year was no exception, with many potential blockbusters beginning their publicity campaigns months before the holiday. However, this year had a big surprise in store as the unexpected bolter The Wandering Earth, a Chinese sci-fi film, emerged as the biggest winner. Premiered on February 5, the film pulled in box office revenue of over 4.6 billion yuan ($685 million) by mid-March, becoming the second best box-office hit in the history of the Chinese film industry, second only to Wolf Warrior II, which earned around 5.7 billion yuan ($850 million).

Produced at a cost of $50 million and involving 7,000 people, it can be called a big-budget production by Chinese standards. The consensus among audiences is that The Wandering Earth is a milestone in China's sci-fi film genre, and because of this film, observers are calling 2019 the watershed year in China's sci-fi film history. The New York Times also stressed the importance of the film to China's film industry, saying that it means "China's film industry has finally joined the space race."

The film was adapted from a novel of the same title written by Chinese sci-fi novelist Liu Cixin, who is known worldwide for his Hugo Awards winner The Three Body Problem. The novel The Wandering Earth has a simple plot, with about 30,000 Chinese characters. It describes how in the far future, to escape from the doomed fate caused by the helium flash of the sun, humans attach big engines to the earth to drive it out of the solar system in search of a new home in another galaxy. This is called The Wandering Earth Plan that spans over 2,500 years.

The film focuses on a fragment of the long journey by the earth as it flies past Jupiter, where humanity combines forces to save the earth from colliding with Jupiter due to a sudden spike in Jupiter's gravity field. The beautiful visual effects and grand settings make the film visually outstanding. It is so popular that after the original release period had finished, the distributer decided that it should be on screen for another two months.

A breakthrough 

Despite the popularity of the film, what Chinese film audiences had actually long expected was a film adapted from the The Three Body Problem. In 2009, when news came out that a Chinese film company had purchased the copyright of the novel and was to turn the epic stories into films, Chinese sci-fi fans objected. Worrying that the masterpiece might be ruined by China's poor ability of producing sci-fi films, they even called for Hollywood's involvement.

Their worries were warranted. Shooting on the first part of The Three Body Problem was completed as early as 2016, but the film hasn't been released to date due to challenges in postproduction.

Sci-fi films have never been a strong point of China's film industry. In 1980, China made the first film in this genre called Dead Coral Island, which was a story about laser weapons. Although produced with poor effects, the film was well received by audiences, many writing to the production team in appreciation. In the next two decades, however, there were only a handful of similar films.

"For a long time, the sci-fi film market has been occupied by imported films, which have influenced the Chinese audience's taste regarding sci-fi films. We used to worry that Chinese sci-fi films would not be accepted," Yin Hong, Vice Chairman of the China Film Association told Xinhua News Agency.

Compared with other categories, sci-fi films have the highest technical requirements, but it is clear that the Chinese film industry is not yet ready to produce these films. "A complete system is yet to be established for producing sci-fi films," Frant Gwo, Chief Director of the film, told China Newsweek.

The directors of The Wandering Earth had to go abroad to learn from their foreign peers about how to set up teams for each part of the film, and experienced many failures in the process before getting to grips with the skills required.

Due to the lack of experience, the crew went through a tough learning curve on set with many mishaps in the action sequences. One example was the dormancy cabins of the space station, borrowed from another film crew, which had to be opened and closed manually with fishing lines.

"The Wandering Earth is a success. But when we look at how it was produced, the team paid a high price," said Yin, adding that by solving these problems, the team completed a task that should have been done with an industrialized system.

Film industrialization 

The Wandering Earth was filmed in Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis, a film park located in east China's Shandong Province. It opened in April 2018 after four and a half years' construction. At a total cost of 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion), it represents the biggest investment worldwide for a film compound. It has 40 high-standard studios and 32 landscape workshops, including the world's largest single studio with an area of 10,000 square meters.

The film park was built in response to China's lack of a complete industrialized system for the film industry. "The distinctive feature of the metropolis is that it is a base for industrialized production of films with supporting facilities across the industry chain," said Sun Hengqin, President of the Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis.

In addition to the investment in facilities, favorable polices are provided to encourage film production at the park. Local government set a 5-billion-yuan ($740 million) fund for the development of the film industry and a maximum subsidy of 40 percent of production costs is provided to films made in the park.

One month after The Wandering Earth was premiered, a ceremony was held in the film park, where a total subsidy of 36 million yuan ($5.4 million) was given to the production team of The Wandering Earth and three other films.

Even before the film turned out to be a blockbuster, Gwo was optimistic about the future of China's sci-fi films. He said that China has huge industrial capacity. "The success of The Wandering Earth will give investors more confidence to invest in China's sci-fi films," he said.

(Comments to hufan@chinafrica.cn)