Playlist

Movies

Action, animation

Monster Hunt 2, a sequel to the 2015 box office champion Monster Hunt, will arrive in theaters on the Lunar New Year, the first day of the 2018 Spring Festival, which falls on Feb 16. In the new film, a blend of computer-generated animation and live-action performances, the monster king's successor Wuba embarks on an adventure with his human friends. Actress Bai Baihe and actor Jing Boran return in the sequel, which also features singer-actress Li Yuchun and Hong Kong's Tony Leung.

Leung plays a gambler who is forced to marry a banker played by Li. In earlier events to promote the movie, award-winning Leung says that his biggest challenge was to imagine the existence of the monster during the filming. The monster was created later in the process using digital technology.

Tomb guardians

One of the biggest-budget China-Australia coproductions, Guardians of the

Tomb, now being screened on the Chinese mainland, is a visual feast for sci-fi horror fans. The film, directed by Australian filmmaker Kimble Rendall, is about a scientist and her team's adventure in an ancient tomb as they look for her missing brother. As the story unfolds, a secret which has been buried for more than 2,000 years with a ruthless ruler comes to light. A-list actress Li Bingbing stars as the scientist, and the cast includes Bruneian actor Wu Chun as well as American model-actor Kellan Lutz.

The producers say that anecdotes about Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, arguably one of the greatest Chinese emperors, inspired them to make the movie. The ruler who yearned for immorality once assigned a court sorcerer to look for the elixir of life overseas.

Forever Young

The film, once planned as a tribute to mark the centenary celebrations of Tsinghua University in 2011, weaves four stories set in different eras to look at the history of the college.

Forever Young, which made its China debut on Jan 12, is directed by novelist-turned filmmaker Li Fangfang and stars A-list actress Zhang Ziyi, and top actors Chang Chen, Huang Xiaoming, Chen Chusheng and Leehom Wang. The four actors play Tsinghua graduates, whose lives reflect the changes and chaos of the eras they live in.

To make scenes look authentic, the crew built a 10,000-square-meter set resembling the 1940s National Southwestern Associated University in Yunnan province.