Future trajectory of science fiction in China uncertain despite soaring success of The Wandering Earth
- The success of the space rescue film in China would have been unthinkable five years ago, say promoters of science fiction genre
- Still, relatively few Chinese science fiction writers have enjoyed success or seen their work picked up for film or television productions
The Chinese film industry got a rocket boost in February with the phenomenal success of sci-fi saga The Wandering Earth.
Released on February 5, it took more than US$600 million at the domestic box office, making it the second-highest grossing film in China after Wu Jing’s 2017 military action film Wolf Warrior 2, which took US$854 million. The film has also been picked up by Netflix, putting it in front of a potentially huge international audience.
The success of The Wandering Earth is being touted as a quantum leap forward for China’s film industry. While kung fu epics and historical romances have achieved limited traction overseas beyond the film festival and art house circuits, the country is banking on the potential of a genre that it regarded, until recently, as niche.
Based on Liu Cixin’s bestselling 2000 novel of the same name, The Wandering Earth tells the story of efforts to propel the planet out of the solar system to escape looming destruction by the sun.
The film’s huge popularity would have been unthinkable just five years ago, says Alex Li Zhaoxin, an editor at the Future Affairs Administration (FAA), an independent organisation dedicated to the promotion of science fiction in China.
“At that time there wasn’t a viable science fiction industry in China,” Li says. A breakthrough came in 2015, he notes, when the American Hugo Awards – given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works – awarded Liu the best novel prize in 2015 for The Three-Body Problem. The book has been translated into more than 30 languages and led to a national conversation about science fiction in China. The following year, Hao Jingfang’s Folding Beijing won the Hugo Award for best novelette.