The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2015–2018
Ashura: China's ¥750M fantasy pulled from theaters after 3 days and ¥46M
The ¥750M fantasy epic — China's most expensive at the time — made ¥46.4M in 3 days, then its investors pulled it from theaters on July 15, 2018.
Alibaba Pictures (阿里巴巴影业) · 2018-07-15
What happened
Ashura (阿修罗) — a fantasy epic directed by Zhang Peng, starring Wu Lei, Carina Lau and Tony Leung, and produced by Alibaba Pictures, Zhenjian Pictures and Ningxia Film Group — was the most expensive Chinese film of its time, with an investment of ¥750 million. It was planned as a trilogy.
Released July 13, 2018, it made ¥46.41 million in three days — about 6% of its cost — and scored 3.1 on Douban. On July 15, the investors announced the film would be pulled from theaters that night, citing a plan to revise and re-release it.
The re-release never came: the film was never shown again and never appeared on streaming services, becoming a piece of lost media. The failure became China's clearest case study of a blockbuster budget with no audience — and the 'revision' announcement read to the industry as an attempt to bury the film rather than save it.
Why it happened
- The budget was a genre gamble with no market test: ¥750M on a fantasy original priced a hit the domestic fantasy genre had never delivered, and the first weekend priced the truth.
- The film was a pastiche with no identity: reviews attacked the CGI-heavy, confused story that borrowed Hollywood spectacle without a script, and the 3.1 Douban score told the market everything.
- The withdrawal made it worse: pulling the film after three days — a move without precedent — turned a flop into a fable.
The lesson
The most expensive Chinese film became a 3-day footnote: ¥750M bought a fantasy with a 3.1 Douban score, and the withdrawal that followed made the flop a fable.
Sources
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