Netflix has purchased the rights to the highest-grossing film of the year so far — the Chinese sci-fi flick called The Wandering Earth.
The movie was first released in China on February 5, but over the past three weeks, the movie earned over $600 million at the box office, making it the second biggest movie in Chinese history on a domestic level.
This kind of success caught Netflix’s attention and the streaming service acquired the movie rights with the goal to translate the movie into 28 languages.
It could be a while before the movie is added to the streaming service. If we’re lucky, it could be added in 2019, but it could be closer to 2020 depending on the streaming service’s current programming release schedule.
For now, check out the trailer below to see what all the hype is about.
While China isn’t known for mainstream sci-fi movies, The Wandering Earth is based on the novella of the same title by Liu Cixin.
IMDB reports that the movie is about the challenges surrounding the sun dying out, and how people have to come together to build a planet thruster to move Earth out of its orbit and get the planet into a new star system to survive.
Of course, a project of this magnitude doesn’t come without problems and unexpected dangers along the way and the mission to save the Earth comes down to a group of young people, who have to carry the responsibility on their shoulders.
Netflix calls the movie majestic, and post-production took over two years to complete. Jerry Zhang, Manager of Content Acquisition at Netflix, revealed in the press release that he’s convinced sci-fi lovers around the world will fall in love with The Wandering Earth.
The movie stars Chuxiao Qu, Jing Wu, Guangjie Li, Man-Tat Ng, Jin Mai Jaho, Mike Kai Sui, and Hongchen Li.
Netflix has yet to announce a release date for The Wandering Earth.