Director brings fresh air to China's tomb raider franchise
- By Zhang Rui
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E-mail China.org.cn, December 29, 2018
With the copyright of all eight volumes of Zhang Muye's novel represented by the online novel website qidian.com, the rights to explore the film adaptations were sold to different film and TV studios. This caused many controversies, as various directors were found to be working on different "Mojin" stories to make them films, TV series and internet series with different casts, while the quality and styles also varied.
Zhang even filed a lawsuit against Lu Chuan for his adaptation of a badly-reviewed "Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe," claiming Lu had made too many changes to the story from the original novel that had hurt Zhang's credit and reputation.
However, Zhang, known for his pen name Tian Xia Ba Chang, praised Fei Xing's new adaptation of "The Worm Valley" and said the story is a pivotal part of the whole franchise. "The imaginative scenes in the original novel are presented in the film," he was quoted by the film distributors in a statement to fans of his books.
Zhang added that Fei had helped make up for some of his regrets in creating the book as he was rush writing the book while watching the 2006 FIFA World Cup held in Germany.
Fei said making the film was very tough, like "eating hard bones." After his critically-acclaimed "Silent Witness" in 2013, Fei immersed himself in the fantasy world for five years in preparation for making this film, with many scenes clearly inspired by Hollywood fantasy and sci-fi epics such as "The Lord of Rings," "King Kong" and "Avatar", along with Chinese elements and oriental beauty such as local scenery and folk songs.
The director said he had hired a world-class visual effects team to create the thrilling spectacles in the film, hoping to please the audience and, at the same time, speed up the process of domestic film industrialization.
Fei has two other "Mojin" installments in development, and one of them will be released in 2019. However, he is not the only one working on the franchise. Legendary Hong Kong film wizard Tsui Hark's "Mojin Returns" will also hit Chinese theaters next year.
"The Worm Valley" opened today in China and will likely dominate the year-end film season at Chinese market.
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