A Chinese Odyssey is a tragicomedy film jointly produced by Stephen Chow Caixing Film Company and Xi 'an Film Studio, directed by Liu Zhenwei and starring Stephen Chow, Athena Chu, Ng Man Tat and Karen Mok.
A Chinese Odyssey consists of Moonlight Box and Wedding of the Great Sage, which tells a love story that spans time and space. The film was released in Hong Kong and the Mainland on 1995, and it didn't start to spread in mainland universities and networks until after 1997, and it quickly became popular. On the 20th anniversary of the film's release, A Chinese Odyssey was re-released in the Mainland on 20 14124 October.
"A Chinese Odyssey" didn't have a detailed script before shooting, but it was just a rough idea, which was taken from "Ji 'an", that is, director and screenwriter Liu Zhenwei. In Liu Zhenwei's view, the candidate for the "Supreme Treasure" in the play is Stephen Chow. Prior to this, Stephen Chow worked with Liu Zhenwei in many films, including Stephen Chow's famous film Gambling Saint. Similarly, in the creation of A Chinese Odyssey, Stephen Chow provided many opinions, and even many familiar dialogues were written by him.
The two films, A Chinese Odyssey, Moonlight Box and Wedding of the Great Sage, were complete according to the original idea, but in the end, the development of the plot exceeded Liu Zhenwei's estimation, and these whimsy could not be included in one film, so we had to change our plans and split them in two. After the film was basically completed, the interior shooting and editing were completed in less than two months.
A Chinese Odyssey has invested more than 60 million Hong Kong dollars, and Stephen Chow is one of the investors. In order to match the schedule of the New Year film, Moonlight Box was first released in 1995 65438+ 10, and the box office was once hot. In two days, the total box office income of 60 cinemas in Hong Kong was more than HK$ 5 million, which was slightly lower than Jackie Chan's Pink Zone. In the same year, "A Chinese Odyssey" was first released in Shanghai, and then in the three northeastern provinces, and the box office was once excellent.
The "good start" did not last long, but then the overall distribution turned sharply. Even in the hottest Hong Kong market at that time, it was finally sold for 25 million yuan. The wedding of the Great Sage, which was released more than a month later, finally earned only 29 million yuan at the box office. Although it can recover the cost, it is far from Stephen Chow's previous films.
In Beijing, A Chinese Odyssey is regarded as a failure case. 1996 In February, the Moonlight Box was released as a winter vacation film, and the Great Sage wedding took place in May. Both films only ended at about 200,000 box office, and some film companies decided to replace A Chinese Odyssey with a domestic film two days later to avoid greater losses.