Coming on the heels of the very successful The Wandering Earth, China’s next big-budget disaster movie is making the rounds at the Cannes film market.
Meridien Entertainment and Base FX are shopping their debut feature, Skyfire, which tells the story of vacationers at a tropical resort who must try to survive when a nearby volcano explodes. Sounds a bit like The Impossible, only with fire instead of water. In addition to being a Chinese production, several things set this film apart:
- It’s not a coproduction, despite having an American director.
- It’s a planned trilogy, a rarity in disaster movies. A representative from Meridien Entertainment has said that a follow-up script is already in progress, as are plans for tie-in merchandise and even theme-park attractions.
- It was filmed twice in its entirety, each in a different language: English and Chinese, although the English version is rumored to be of much less professional quality. According to a production source, “It was very difficult shooting everything twice, and in the end the Chinese acting is a lot better and more natural than the English.”
Simon West (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider; Con Air) directed a script by debut writer Wei Bu. The film features Jason Isaacs (Star Trek: Discovery; The Patriot), Xueqi Wang (Iron Man 3), Hannah Quinlivan (Skyscraper), and Shawn Dou (Under the Hawthorn Tree).
The film was slated for a July 2019 release, but with substantial postproduction work to do, it’s doubtful that the filmmakers will meet that deadline.