Things to Come The Wandering Earth and Chinese Cinema’s Growing Predominance
Would it surprise you to learn that the third-biggest film in the world so far this year grossed over A$1.5 million in Australia,1 and yet it has hardly been reviewed in the English-language press here? Meet the Chinese sci-fi phenomenon that is The Wandering Earth (Frant Gwo, 2019). And there is some urgency to familiarising ourselves with this film, because it looks like the face of the future. Released over the Chinese New Year period, it has grossed over US$690 million in China, making it the second-largest grosser of all time in that country.2 At the time of writing, the film had a worldwide gross approaching US$700 million, making it third on 2019’s international box-office charts, behind Avengers: Endgame (Anthony & Joe Russo) and Captain Marvel (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck).3
In world cinema, as in world anything right now, China is the big news. Its cinema-exhibition revenue continues to grow at a furious rate (9 per cent last year), with a box office totalling US$8.9 billion in 2018 – on pace to overtake the North American figure of US$11.9 billion within the next three years. The advent in this country of an effects-driven genre such as sci-fi shows that some Chinese filmmakers are intent on integrating the
