The Monk Comes Down The Mountain helmer, BAFTA award-winning director Chen Kaige is going big, it seems. For his latest period action drama, Legend Of The Demon Cat, we get an entire, immersive city built accordingly as the backdrop for the film, and to much avail with the intent of its use thereafter as a themepark.
The numbers: $200 million U.S. dollars for a construction period of five years, 150 shooting days between three seasons and with over 15,000 costumes, and as many as 1,200 visual effects shots to create the character. It sounds like a pretty penny and the first teaser offers a fair enough sampling of the elegance and on-set detail and gloss of Kaige’s vision ahead of its December release.
LEGEND OF THE DEMON CAT is set over a thousand years ago during the Tang Dynasty. A Chinese poet and a Japanese monk join forces to investigate a demonic cat who has possessed a general’s wife and wreaked havoc on the imperial court. The investigation takes gruesome and unexpected twists, resulting in the monk and the poet unraveling the mystery behind the death decades earlier of legendary, beautiful concubine Yang Guifei.
Front and center are actors Sometani Shota and Huang Xuan and actress Yuqi Zhang for the film inspired by Baku Yumemakura’s four-volume bestseller, Ku-Kai. Moonstone picked up international sales rights back in May for the Chinese/Japanese co-production shared between New Classics Media, Emperor Motion Pictures and Japan-based Kadokawa.
Check out the teaser!
