This is about typical for "amateur director meets clueless rich guy" projects. There are lists of movie flops, but they usually only include movies that shipped. Wikipedia has a list of unreleased films.[1] If you read the trades (Variety and The Hollywood Reporter), you can read about many other projects that started production but didn't ship.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unreleased_films

The book "Tales From Development Hell" has backstories on some interesting movies that never got made. It was fascinating to read about some of the complications that you'd never think about.

I read somewhere (Wikipedia, I suppose) that Wreck-It Ralph was in development hell for decades. Long enough for its target audience to grow up into nostalgic 30-somethings.

This film sounds like what would happen if you purchased the components of a blockbuster from Aliexpress and then had them pieced together by China's Tommy Wiseau.

On that description alone, I want to see it.

Fascinating, but not surprising for anyone who's spent any time or done business in China. For more reading, an expat cast as an extra in this film kept a diary: http://beijingcream.com/2014/07/deep-trouble-on-the-set-of-e...

The trailer didn't look bad in spots. Reminded me of a mix of Hollywood's epic movies set in Egypt and similar of the 50s/60s... the effects were off and on good looking. Still its so odd seeing a "Chinese" movie and everyone is white

> Jiang told him that he planned to cast foreign actors in the lead roles and wanted to tailor the movie for international distribution.

I wonder if it irks him that the Chinese film which has made the most money ever in the history of Chinese cinema (US$553.8 million so far, even beating Hollywood films in China) is a film called "The Mermaid."

And it features a completely Chinese main cast and the story is geared towards the Chinese audience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mermaid_%282016_film%29

> I wonder if it irks him that the Chinese film which has made the most money ever in the history of Chinese cinema

Why should it? That's awesome.

Since this story and thread seem to be about failure..

Here's a film made in China I did like, called Ocean Heaven, starring Jet Li

It's a drama and touching story about a single father and his disabled son.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWAknxhWNZI

Oddly that preview felt like I was in Vashj'ir in World of Warcraft watching a whale shark swim by.

If you made a few changes to the article, I'd bet it was talking about Waterworld!

It's like the Jiro Nishi sub-plot from The Big Hit come to life.

Taste the Golden Spray!

I feel like this would have translated better as a videogame

i always think this sort of thing is for the tax break

headline had me thinking -- Waterworld?

Are all Atavist articles designed to be so distracting, or is it just this one?

I had to fight the urge to close the tab each time one of those damn sea creatures lazily swam in front of the text I'm trying to read, but the fascinating writing and subject matter just wouldn't let me. It's like the author wanted to impart just a bit of the torture experienced by the featured crew members, as they fought to complete the project in spite of a fatal lack of vision.

NoScript fixes this.

It actually makes Firefox hang for a few seconds.

I find 'Reader Mode' usually makes for a better experience on Firefox (especially mobile).

in console - $('img').hide();

I read the headline as "underwear fantasy".

"Well, I don’t think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error." (HAL9000)

I think there is a word for that.

A friend of a friend used to run a record store called Futurizm, and my brain always wanted to read it as "Furzsturm" ("fart storm"). Always made me smile. Still does - it would be an awesome name for whatever one would attach it to. ;-)

The word you may be looking for / thinking of is melcryptovestimentaphilia.

I was able to read it correctly as "uderwater". It probably was a perception error.