“The Wandering Earth” reviving Qingdao’s film scene

With Chinese sci-fi blockbuster “The Wandering Earth” now becoming the second highest grossing film of all time on the Chinese mainland, its production base, the Oriental Movie Metropolis in Qingdao, has become a focus of new attention.

Oriental Movie Metropolis has 40 top-class sound stages, including the one of the world’s largest, at 10-square kilometers in size. Oriental also boasts what’s reputed to be the world’s only state-of-the-art underwater studio. “The Wandering Earth,” which was shot there in 2017, used 8 sound stages. This required nearly 100,000 square meters of scene construction. The space capsule featured in the film was also built to scale at the site.

Beyond “The Wandering Earth,” another popular Spring Festival film, “Crazy Alien,” was also filmed at the Oriental Movie Capital Industrial Park (OMCIP) in Qingdao. With the “Fengshen Trilogy,” and other big productions in the pipeline, Qingdao is gaining a renewed focus for Chinese film and television production.

Qingdao was designated by UNESCO as a “City of Film” in October 2017, becoming one of the thirteen on the Creative Cities Network list, and the first of its kind in China. To date, more than 200 movie and TV companies are registered in the Lingshan Bay Film and TV Cultural Zone. Around 100 movies and TV series are shot and produced in the Zone per year. Different from most other the domestic film bases, Oriental Movie Metropolis supports the entire film-making chain, including shooting, post-production, as well as accommodations for film crews, actors and others. In addition to a sprawling studio complex, the site includes a theme park, a shopping mall, a film museum, hotels, clubs and other facilities.

Local authorities in Qingdao has identified film as a way to create sustainable urban development. As such, a series of policies enabling development within the film and television industry have been rolled out in the city.