Actor Qu Chuxiao. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Another film that set to open on Feb 5, Crazy Alien, is loosely inspired by Liu's short story, The Rural Teacher. However, the feature, directed by Ning Hao, tells a completely different story, seemingly more a black comedy in keeping with the director's typical style.

The Wandering Earth is directed by Guo Fan, a sci-fi aficionado, whose favorite movies include Stanley Kubrick's 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.

"It is a dream come true for me to direct a sci-fi film," says Guo, adding that his previous efforts have all been driven by this ambition.

Before launching the new film, since mid-2015, Guo has directed two romances, Lee's Adventures (2011) and My Old Classmate (2014), which garnered him enough of a reputation to convince investors to back his foray into the genre.

However, he soon found his dream turning into an unexpectedly larger-scale project than he initially anticipated-his crew expanded from the scheduled 700 to 4,000 members, making 10,000 props and 8,000 art pieces to help bring his vision to life.

Guo had spent more than eight months pulling together elements of the futuristic world, including its geographical landscape, education and political systems and its social environment.

"It (the filming procedure) was like running a marathon, but I couldn't see the end point," recalls Guo.