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| yna@yna.co.kr 2023-01-07 14:29:19
SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Yonhap) – “Moon Man,” a 2022 Chinese sci-fi comedy film co-written and directed by Zhang Chiyu that topped the Chinese box office last July, will be hitting the Korean box office on Jan. 11.
Amid the COVID-19 swings with only 70% of theaters opened, “Moon Man” raked in about 3 billion yuan (600 billion in Korean won) and also ranked No.2 on the annual Chinese box office chart.
Compared to the 2022 South Korean crime action film “The Roundup,” which topped the annual Korean box office chart as the No.1 but yet stood at an estimated 131.2 billion won in profit, the amount “Moon Man” had pulled in exceeds quadruple.
The mega-hit Chinese movie is an adaptation of South Korean cartoonist Jo-seok’s webcomic series “Moon You,” which tells the story of a flight dynamics engineer Dugu Yue who finds himself stranded on the moon and attempts to survive.
Director Zhang Chiyu, who brought cosmic illustrations to the big screen, is a rising young director who just entered his mid-30s.
During his visit to Korea to promote the movie’s release, Director Zhang introduced the movie as an “uplifting movie that gives hope to the audience, as one of our lines says ‘If there is to be a whole cosmic space out there, we will get back together,’” adding, “even with the great number of outstanding Korean movies out there, I hope the Korean audience also enjoys our ‘Moon Man.’”
As an epitome of a human comedy film, “Moon Man” definitely complements a genuine laugh with an appropriate amount of wit and jest, along with an extraordinary imagination; moreover, the movie even touches the hearts of the audiences as they watch the main character Dugu Yue hollowly stares at the earth, while he is floating on the moon.
The multi-faceted film also shows all the charms SF movies have. Audiences who watch the film more as an SF film rather than a comedy film will be able to see the amount of effort that the production has put into the set and CG. In fact, the production of this movie cost about 400 million yuan (75 billion won), much of which was invested in SF special effects.
In his interview, Director Zhang recounted the effort he had put into the film: “The surface of lunar surfaces we had managed to produce at the set is 6 thousand square meters wide. On top of that, I also made 3D topography that could look like the surface of the moon, such as pits and hills. We actually had rocks grounded to visualize different sizes of the particles that are on the moon’s surface. We made six layers of surface for the moon. We definitely wanted to devote our time and effort to improve the 3D effect.”
As the film was produced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the production crew had to endure major challenges. Looking back, Director Zhang said, “We had to work so hard,” as reconstructing a webcomic into a movie was not an easy task.
The young Chinese director has also been very interested in Korean films. He said that he noticed that since both Korea and China belong to East Asia, there was little to compare between the Korean films and those of China, at least compared to those in Hollywood. Director Zhang also mentioned how some special genre films in Korea are produced with outstanding quality and features.
Director Zhang picked “Miracle in Cell No.7,” directed by Lee Hwan-kyung, as the best Korean movie he has ever watched, along with a comment that he would like to produce action comedies similar to Director Lee Byung-hun’s “Extreme Job.”
“If I get an opportunity to work with Korean actors, it would be my honor. Obviously, having a well-written script would be the priority over the actors that I get to work with. In fact, there is one more thing to consider – it is the staff. I love the works of music director Kim Tae-sung and editor Nam Na-young.”
(This article is translated from Korean to English by Ha eun Lee)
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