How ‘Asura’’s record budget produced an epic box office flop
The flop by China’s most expensive movie is a reminder that cinema patrons in the US$8.2 billion box office market are rapidly changing their tastes, and that Hollywood stardust may be coming off from blockbuster epics.
On paper, China’s latest epic movie Asura checked all the right boxes: The star-studded cast combined veteran Hong Kong actors with the latest mainland teenage heart throbs. It had dazzling action scenes, lavish costumes, technical and production support from the Hollywood crews that worked on Furious 7 and Deadpool.
Still, the movie failed miserably, grossing 49 million yuan after it was screened in 118,000 sessions over three days in the world’s largest movie market, earning less than 10 per cent of its 750 million yuan (US$111 million) production budget, according to Baidu Nuomi’s data.
Taking six years to develop, Asura is an epic based on Buddhist mythology that sought to make itself into the Chinese hybrid of The Lord of the Rings and the Game of Thrones.
A third of the film’s budget went to special effects and computer-generated imagery in 2,400 scenes throughout the movie’s 141-minute running time. Costumes by an Oscar-winning costume designer cost 30 million yuan, while fees for the cast took up 75 million yuan.
Filming took place in the Ningxia and Tibet autonomous regions, filling the screen with blue sky, alpine lakes and open plains.
