In February, one of the biggest Chinese films ever opened– ‘The Wandering Earth’ directed by Frant Gwo, and adapted from the short story by Locus Award and Hugo Award-winning author Liu Cixin. ‘The Wandering Earth’ made $693 million in its native China, and an additional $7M outside of that country. It became the second-highest grossing movie in China of all time, and the second-highest-grossing non-English film worldwide. In both cases, ‘The Wandering Earth’ trails behind 2017’s ‘Wolf Warrior 2’. It also currently holds the position of the third-highest-grossing film of 2019 worldwide, trailing behind ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and ‘Captain Marvel’.
RELATED: Movie Review: ‘The Wandering Earth’
So fans in the U.S. and around the world have been keen to check this flick out to see what all the fuss is about. In February, Netflix announced that it had picked up the global distribution rights, with Manager of Content Acquisition, Jerry Zhang saying:
“[Netflix is] committed to providing entertainment lovers with access to a wide variety of global content. With its high-quality production and story-telling, we believe that The Wandering Earth will be loved by sci-fi fans around the world.”
Unfortunately, Netflix didn’t announce when ‘The Wandering Earth’ would be available to stream at the time. It also didn’t list it as becoming available this month. But… uh, oh, by the way, it dropped this weekend.
Yeah, Netflix just dumped it with zero fanfare. Of course, American audiences are busy going nuts for ‘Endgame’ and ‘Game of Thrones’, but there have been many that have been keeping an eye out for this foreign blockbuster, which received a limited theatrical released here.
As the sun is dying out, people all around the world build giant planet thrusters to move Earth out of its orbit and sail Earth to a new star system. Yet the 2500-year journey comes with unexpected dangers, and in order to save humanity, a group of young people in this age of a wandering Earth fight hard for the survival of humankind.
The movie has a strong (but not glowing) 78% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes. Our reviewer, Dave Taylor gave it 3½ atoms out of five.
So, if you’ve been waiting to check out ‘The Wandering Earth’ for yourself, it’s on Netflix now.
