The makers of a low-budget Chinese fantasy film that opened in Beijing has been picked up by Hollywood with the intention of commissioning a remake, according to a press conference held on Thursday.
Parallel Forest was produced by Poly Film, a Beijing-based production firm specialising in low-cost movies, in collaboration with Jiameng Dake Yutian movie production partnership, and directed by a young director Zheng Lei.
According to the producers, the film was shot with only three actors and finished in 14 days on a budget of one million yuan ($150,000). At the screening, the cast and crew of the film recounted their stories from the difficult ride or die filming. “If we couldn’t finish filming in 14 days, we’d have to fire everyone since there wouldn’t be enough money to finance additional filming,” Zheng added.
“Friends loaned me the one-million-yuan investment. Nobody anticipated it to be a big deal at the time, let alone get noticed by Hollywood.” According to Zhang Wenqiu, the film’s producer, Parallel Forest, a sci-fi and thriller picture, is the first fantasy film from China to be recreated by Hollywood.
Aldis Hodge, who won a Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance in The Invisible Man, and his brother, Edwin Hodge, who starred in The Tomorrow War, will appear in the Hollywood adaptation.
Parallel Forest is Zheng’s debut feature film, and it recounts the tale of Du Yan, a mother who loses her kid in an automobile accident but is able to reunite with him by travelling via a parallel forest.
Du prepares for her post-accident recovery trip by spending time in the woods. She wanders into a parallel section of the woods, where she encounters herself, her husband, and even her surviving kid in another time and location.
Poly Film has a reputation for sponsoring a lot of exceptional low-cost Chinese films, such as Get Out Your Secret in 1999 and My Sisters and Brothers in 2001, in collaboration with young and talented directors.
At the film premiere, Poly Film’s general manager, Zhang Xinsheng, described the film as “energetic, thought-provoking, and fascinating.” “The film’s budget is modest, yet it’s full of charm.”
