China offers hope for an ungodly Hollywood flop

From the Spring Festival's holiday season to the slow month of March, Chinese screens have been dominated by domestic titles, except for Disney's recent smash hit, Zootopia.

Local movie enthusiasts are "thirsty for Hollywood content", says Zheng Ye, production head of the Shanghai-based studio Fundamental Films, which has close connections with European and North American markets.

Set in a milieu of ancient Egypt where gods and humans coexist, the 127-minute Gods of Egypt tells the story of a mortal hero assisting an Egyptian god to fight against his evil uncle to take back the throne.

The storyline and conspiracies are easily understood by Chinese viewers, whose history over thousands of years features numerous royal conflicts, as some reviews say on Douban.com.

"The tale－still revolving on the good-versus-evil stereotype－is a bit boring, but the colossal spectacles deserve to be watched on the big screen," Miao Luyong, a Beijing viewer, says after the Monday night sneak preview in downtown Beijing.

Gods of Egypt's hopes for a second chance in China are not unprecedented.

The 2013 sci-fi adventure film Pacific Rim, which suffered a 52 percent slump in its second week in North America, and the 2014 robot sci-fi movie Transformers: Age of Extinction, which received overwhelmingly negative reviews there, both achieved commercial success in China.