Posted in: Movies, News | Tagged: A Writers Odyssey, Assassin in Red, blockbuster, chinese fantasy, chinese movies, CMC Pictures, Dong Zijian, Guo Jingfei, Lei Jiayin, Lu Yang, Yang Mi
A Writer's Odyssey: CMC Pictures Reveals New Trailer, Release Date
A Writer's Odyssey (Previous title: Assassin in Red), the high concept Chinese fantasy blockbuster directed by Lu Yang (Brotherhood of Blades), is getting a US theatrical release. CMC Pictures revealed the official international poster and trailer today and announced the release date would be February 12th, 2021.
A Writer's Odyssey tells the story of Kongwen Lu (Dong Zijian), the author of a fantasy novel series following a heroic teenager, also named Kongwen, on a quest to end the tyrannical rule of Lord Redmane, under the guidance of a Black Armor (Guo Jingfei). But through a strange twist of fate, the fantasy world of the novel begins to impact life in the real world, leading Guan Ning (Lei Jiayin) to accept a mission from Tu Ling (Yang Mi) to kill the author.
This is one of the more interesting Chinese fantasy movie releases of the year. For one thing, it's not another fantasy wuxia movie set in a mythical ancient medieval setting. It's actually set in the present day, which is a rarity for fantasy movies from China. Wuxia movies have become the equivalent of Westerns in China, a comfort food genre, and a fallback commercial genre for both movies and television. There are countless movies and TV series in the medieval wuxia genre, most of them adaptations of classic and recent novels. Many of them can be seen in the West on streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and even YouTube.
What's interesting about A Writer's Odyssey is its metafictional premise. It offers a look at the types of fantasy and genre fiction being published in China now. The country has been going through a Science Fiction and Fantasy boom in book publishing. This movie offers a postmodernist deconstruction and commentary on the types of themes and preoccupations the writers of genre fiction explore, consciously or otherwise. This makes it one of the new Chinese movies worth your time. You can follow the movie on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram via the hashtag #AWritersOdyssey.
A Writer's Odyssey opens in the US on February 12th.