Sino-Hollywood sci-fi production tells China-based story

Blake Lively. [Photo provided to China Daily]

"Usually we have people fighting for people, but here you have an entity coming into its own, with a lot of philosophical concepts questioning what's happening," says Toni Piech, CEO of PAE Pictures, the producer of Log Out.

Relevant topic

"Urban angst" is the expression used by Piech to sum up this future crisis of people drifting away from each other and feeling enormously lonely.

He finds the topic particularly relevant to China. Because "it's easy to forget what's important (about life) when you run at this pace", he says of the change in Chinese society along with rapid development.

"China is a place that has a lot of interesting, meaningful and clever things buried under the surface of what's happening," Piech says.

As the kickoff for a future PAE "sci-fi franchise", the movie is expected to be available this fall via China's leading video streaming website iQiyi.

It will also be distributed by Yahoo, Dailymotion and Youtube in other parts of Asia, the company says.