Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s army of terracotta soldiers were created to protect the Chinese ruler in the afterlife, but they’ll be invading pop culture soon.
The Guardian reports that the Shanghai Film Group is partnering with United States producer Avi Arad to make a superhero film starring the 2,000 year old army which was unearthed by farmers in north-west China in 1974. The titles being kicked around are either “Super Terracotta Warriors” or “Rise of the Terracotta Warriors.” In the film the army will rise, golem-like, to fight off an alien invasion.
I have to reign in my snarkiness because the titles and concept sound like they’d be more at home in a SyFy original movie (think: “Sharknado” or “Chupacabra v.s. The Alamo”) than in a summer blockbuster, but there are a couple interesting things at play here. The first is that Arad is famous for working on superhero films such as “Iron Man,” “X-Men” and the 2002 “Spider-Man” movies, all of which are responsible for the (heavenly) glut of geek-based films which have been chewing up box offices in the United States for the last 15 years. The second is that films from here have been making serious bank in China. Compare, for example, “Transformers: Age of Extinction” which earned $245 million in the United States and $301 million in China. That movie, while widely panned by nerds in the U.S., became the highest-grossing movie ever in China.
This all sets up a fascinating risk-reward dynamic for the Shanghai Film Group. The potential success or failure of the film will be equally enormous.
But what do you guys think? Cool? Corny? Is Emperor Qin Shi Huang rolling around in his grave? Let us know in the comments.
Bill Rodgers is a Contributing Editor at CFile and is staging a hunger strike until Sony gives the Spider-Man franchise to Marvel Studios.
I wished I had thought of it…