There’s a weird thing happening in the film world right now where Hollywood movies set records in China but Chinese movies don’t make so much as a dent at the American box office, if they ever play here at all. For example, we all know about Furious 7. It’s the one where the Fast & Furious characters pretty much turned into unofficial superheroes and Vin Diesel mumbled the word “family” as much as possible (and it was awesome). It grossed over $1 billion worldwide earlier this year and supplanted the most recent Transformers as the highest-grossing film in China’s history. However, have you ever heard of Monster Hunt? Because it just passed Furious 7 on the country’s record chart. According to China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, by day 58 of its theatrical run Monster Hunt is now sitting at $380.95 million compared to Furious 7‘s $380.67 million. At China’s current rate of growth, Monster Hunt‘s record could conceivably be broken by some other movie later this year or next year. However, for now Monster Hunt is the biggest movie China has ever seen.
So, what the heck is it? One crazy-looking movie, that’s what. It’s like Junior mixed with the Adipose monsters from Doctor Who married to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It was directed by a Hong Kong native who worked in Hollywood for a long time, supervising the animation on Antz and the first two Shrek movies before directing Shrek the Third.
Here’s the plot synopsis:
In a fantasy world far, far away, monsters ruled the land. Then came human’s all-out war in an attempt to seize the land. In its final days, they outwitted the monsters and succeeded in driving them into the dark mountains. Ever since, monsters were forbidden to step into the land again. If they were found, they would be captured and exterminated. For all these years, the two races have lived in their separate worlds, until the birth of a new monster king who would reshape the balance of power and bring in the new world order.
As of right now, there is no US release date.
We Minored in Film 
“From the creator of Shrek”? I really wanted to see this, because, it looks awesome crazy, but this line makes me wonder.
Oh crap. I forgot to explain that part. It is not really from one of the creators of Shrek. It is from the guy who was a supervising animator on Shrek 1 and 2 and directed Shrek the third as well as several of dreamworks’ animated shorts. Incidentally, this director is originally from Hong kong. So he is kind of returned home after a Hollywood career.
That is actually a plus in my eyes…because the animation of Shrek is better than the movie imho. I wonder if they will dub the movie for the German market….they often do it with particularly successful Chinese movies.