News came late last night that streaming giant Netflix have acquired the rights for Frant Gwo's sci-fi thrillfest, The Wandering Earth. Already a box office phenomenon in China, earning $603 million over its first two weeks of release in the Mainland, it shows no signs of slowing down. Ex-pat audiences have been filling up the cinemas here in North America as well.
For those of us who are fortunate enough to have seen The Wandering Earth here at home we too have fallen under its spectacular spell. We do encourage you, if you are near a cinema that is playing this film, to seek it out on the big screen. We are grateful to Netflix for picking up The Wandering Earth but something like this truly does deserve the cinematic experience.
The Wandering Earth is a marvel of imagination, inspiration, execution, and excitement. With a cast led by new age Chinese superstar Wu Jing (Wolf Warrior 2), the film tells the parallel tales of redemption both on Earth and in the navigation space station with due attention paid to both.The Wandering Earth is one of the most successful science fiction films of the last decade in that regard, it has no shame in which heartstrings it pulls, and it plays its audience like a fiddle. Thankfully for us, it's a beautiful song that I could listen to a million times over.
Variety reports that Netflix has not set a date for release.
Adapted from a 2000 novella of the same name by the godfather of Chinese sci-fi, Liu Cixin, the film tells the story of people working together to save the planet from our aged, imploding sun by moving it with giant thrusters to another solar system.“Netflix is committed to providing entertainment lovers with access to a wide variety of global content,” said Jerry Zhang, manager of content acquisition at Netflix. “With its high-quality production and story-telling, we believe that ‘The Wandering Earth’ will be loved by sci-fi fans around the world.”The film is directed and written by Frant Gwo. It features a cast including Qu Chuxiao, Li Guangjie, Ng Man-tat and Zhao Jinmai, with a special appearance by Wu Jing.“The movie is a majestic feast for the eyes with massive production scale rarely seen in Mandarin films,” Netflix said. “Its post-production 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.”