'The Wandering Earth' prequel to open on the first day of Spring Festival

As the follow-up to China’s highest-grossing sci-fi movie of all time, The Wandering Earth II is scheduled to open across domestic theaters on Jan 22, the first day of the upcoming Spring Festival.

Reprising actor Wu Jing as a fearless astronaut, the new movie released a trailer on Tuesday, revealing several new roles, including Hong Kong star Andy Lau as an engineer and heartbroken father who would do anything to extend the “l(fā)ife” of his deceased daughter in a special way. The movie also features veteran actors Li Xuejian and Sha Yi.

As a prequel to The Wandering Earth, which has so far grossed 4.7 billion yuan ($681 million) since it was released in 2019, the second installment returns to an earlier period, recounting how the world is facing an unprecedented crisis and planning to migrate Earth out of the solar system by installing more than 10,000 enormous fusion-powered engines on Earth.

In the new trailer, MOSS, the artificial intelligence operating system of the international space station, becomes the “protagonist” to give a series of hints, predicting how humankind will face off a string of catastrophes, thus forced to embark on a space odyssey.

Currently, the movie is widely reckoned as one of the most appealing blockbusters in the 2023 Spring Festival holiday, a lucrative box-office period.