Major stars of the 141-minute Asura pose for cameras. The film contains around 2,400 special-effects scenes and was shot on 30 soundstages covering an area of over 80,000 square meters.(Photo provided to China Daily)
Director Zhang Peng reveals the crew built a 1,500-square-meter set installed with six giant LED screens to visualize Tian, the fictional wonderland mainly consisting of light and shadow.
For the producers, the movie is an ambitious project which they hope will raise the bar for the Chinese film industry.
Over the past decade, China has witnessed an unprecedented expansion in its movie market, propelling it to become the world's second largest market in terms of annual global box-office takings, and home to the highest number of cinema screens of any country in the world.
But it has been a long-held regret that the country's film industry still lags far behind Hollywood.
With the belief that big-budget movies with heavy visual effects are the most bankable genre to help China expand into overseas markets, homegrown filmmakers continue to gravitate toward investing in these kinds of productions.
