Romantic epic at the movies for Qixi festival

Lead actor Huang Xiaoming (second from left) and actress Fan Bingbing (second from right) attend the premiere of The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom in Beijing.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

But producer Yu Dong, head of Bona Film Group, is reluctant to make a precise prediction of ticket sales.

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"We are only eager for a good result," Yu says. "But it will surely set a new record in terms of the Qixi Festival's movie market. It is rare in summer to see a domestic blockbuster with such a large budget, big scenes and grand narrative."

He previously predicted Bona's highly anticipated road movie The Continent, released last week, would earn 800 million yuan at the box office. Although the film's takings of 285 million yuan by the end of last weekend is good, considering the tough competition with other films, he confesses the final takings will probably be 600 million yuan.

Few Chinese fantasy movies have achieved both box-office and critical success in the past decade.

In 2005, Chen Kaige's The Promise lifted the curtain on the country's fantasy blockbuster, but this famed director and his all-star cast were lambasted by critics and were later widely scorned by the public thanks to a popular spoof video online.

The Monkey King, a 3-D adaption from the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, earned more than 1 billion yuan in ticket sales around the last Spring Festival, and remains the highest-grossing film this year. Nevertheless, it scored a miserable 4.2 points out of 10 on Douban.com, the nation's major film-review website.

Perhaps, for a movie targeted at people who flock to cinemas to celebrate their own romance, all these concerns do not matter. Fan Bingbing, who claims to be single, said at the premiere: "We usually pursue common and simple love in daily life. So, why not enjoy some strong and bizarre romance this time in the movie?"