One of 2019’s biggest films has mostly slipped under the radar outside of its native China: The Wandering Earth, a movie billed as China’s first cinematic science fiction blockbuster.
The film is based on a novelette by The Three-Body Problem author Cixin Liu that follows the efforts of scientists and engineers who discover that the sun will destroy the Earth within the next century. To save humanity, they hatch an ambitious plan to use thousands of mountain-sized rocket engines to move Earth out of its orbit and travel around Jupiter to slingshot the planet toward another star 4.2 light-years away. But as they do so, the engine system fails, and teams have to rush to reactivate them before Earth crashes into Jupiter.
While the film has been enormously popular in China, it had a more limited release across the world. That will soon change, as Netflix has purchased the rights to stream the film worldwide.
May 6, 2019, 4:58 PM UTCTasha Robinson
China’s blockbuster The Wandering Earth is gorgeous, goofy, and on Netflix now
The country’s first big-budget science fiction epic is often familiar, but it does spectacle on an impressive scale
Mar 3, 2019, 2:52 PM UTCAndrew Liptak
Watch how a studio created The Wandering Earth’s fantastic world in this VFX reel
A sign of how far the Chinese film industry has come
Feb 21, 2019, 5:34 PM UTCAndrew Liptak
China’s blockbuster The Wandering Earth is coming to Netflix
China’s first major science fiction epic has become its second-biggest film release, earning more than $600 million
Jan 27, 2019, 5:10 PM UTCAndrew Liptak
A new trailer for The Wandering Earth shows off a desperate plan to save the planet
China’s biggest science fiction blockbuster to date
Oct 31, 2018, 5:42 PM UTCAndrew Liptak
The Wandering Earth could be China’s breakout sci-fi blockbuster film
An adaptation of Cixin Liu’s The Wandering Earth could be China’s first breakout science fiction film
