Have you ever heard of the upcoming fantasy-action film The Mystery of the Dragon Seal: Journey to China? Probably not, but the big-budget project stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, the late Rutger Hauer and Game of Thrones alum Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister). At the least, it sounds like something you should have heard of, doesn’t it?
So why haven’t you? A Russian-Chinese coproduction, the movie has been in limbo for the last two years, hamstrung by production delays and legal disputes. Now, the action pic has a release date: August 16, 2019…but only in Russia and China.
Shot in 2017, The Mystery of the Dragon Seal: Journey to China is a sequel to the Russian movie, Forbidden Empire (2014). While the first movie was a big hit in Russia (its highest-grossing film in 2014), it found no real audience outside the country. The Russo-Chinese producers saw potential in furthering the franchise, so they brought back the first installment’s director, Oleg Stepchenko, hired aging box office powerhouses Schwarzenegger and Chan, and prepared to take the worldwide market by storm.
And then you never heard about it. Here’s an early trailer below (it’s in Russian, but you’ll get the gist).
“The English traveler Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) receives from Peter the Great an order to map the Russian Far East,” reads the synopsis. “Once again he sets out for a long journey full of incredible adventures that will eventually lead him to China. The cartographer will unexpectedly face a lot of breathtaking discoveries, encounter bizarre creatures, meet with Chinese Princesses, and confront deadly martial arts masters, and even the king of all dragons, the Dragon King. What could be more dangerous than meeting eye-to-eye with Viy, except doing it again? What would be stronger this time, a staunch skepticism of the scientist or the old black magic that has seized power of Eastern lands?”
All good questions, although there are some that are left out. How does the script work Schwarzenegger and Chan into this? Do they fight in an epic action scene Hollywood denied us in the ’80s?
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Anyway, given who’s involved, you’d think this movie would see a stateside release eventually, but that’s not a sure thing without Hollywood producers involved, although the movie is being distributed by Universal. If we have to import it, that’s what we’ll do, because it looks weird and fun.
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