'Monster Hunt,' a 3D Movie About a Walking White Radish, is Breaking Box Office Records in China
Hollywood has set its eyes on China as its new promised land — a country with more than a billion potential moviegoers, whom the big studios are all hoping to lure to American blockbusters. But right now, thanks to some help from the government, a home-grown film is drawing all the audiences (and earning hundreds of millions of dollars) in China.
Over the weekend, Monster Hunt, a 3-D film featuring a mix of adorable and terrifying CGI monsters, set the record for most successful Chinese film of all time, hitting $211 million at the box office. That total makes it the fifth best-selling film of all time in China — behind Furious 7 ($390 million), Transformers: Age of Extinction ($320 million), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($240 million), and Jurassic World ($228 million). Three of those films came out earlier this year, before the government-imposed blackout on foreign films for the month of July, which give films like Monster Hunt a chance to shine and promote the rapidly growing Chinese film industry.
Monster Hunt is helmed by Raman Hui, who co-directed Shrek the Third, and features a story that recalls a mix of How to Train Your Dragon, Pokemon, Crouching Tiger and many creature features. As you’ll see in the trailer above, it’s got a blend of CGI action, drama, and comedy. In one particularly memorable — and evidently very important — moment, a man gives birth to a white, radish-like baby creature named Wuba, who’s destined to become king of the monsters in medieval China. Wuba is the key to stopping a terrible war between humans and monsters, and must be smuggled across the country by his father and a young female bounty hunter.
According to a review from website Screen Daily, the CGI animation is impressive — Hui worked for years at DreamWorks Animation — and there’s a sort of early Spielberg-esque vibe to the film (additionally, the article notes, the baby-like Wuba could prove “a potent merchandising goldmine to rival the Minions”). American audiences, the website guesses, may be a bit beguiled by the film, but it’s overall a solid — if uneven — adventure.
Monster Hunt was an immediate phenomenon, breaking the records for best opening day ($26.45 million) and biggest opening weekend ($109 million), shattering the records held by last year’s hit The Monkey King.
Alas, there’s no guarantee that curious American audiences will get a chance to see Monster Hunt anytime soon — at least not legally. Even a major hit like The Monkey King never found its way to U.S. audiences theatrically, and the only way to watch it now stateside is to buy it via shady import-DVD dealers, or find it via torrent sites. But perhaps Monster Hunt will be enough of a monster hit to force Wuba to take a trip to the U.S.