10 Finished Movies That Disappeared Without A Trace

With a budget far in excess of $100 million, Asura was China's most expensive ever film production. The directorial debut of Marvel stunt coordinator Peng Zhang with visual effects from people behind Deadpool and the Fast And The Furious series and costumes from Lord Of The Rings Oscar-winner Ngila Dickson, this ambitious epic based on Buddhist legends was intended to be China's answer to Middle-earth.

$100 million movies don't tend to just vanish, but that's exactly what happened to Asura. In a week it went from being the first of a proposed giant fantasy trilogy to being completely pulled from cinemas.

In that one week of Chinese release the mega-budget wannabe blockbuster took the equivalent of just $7 million and earned some pretty negative reviews.

Producers fell back on the classic "online trolls" excuse to defend the movie's poor reception. A "shuijun" (literally "water army", the term for paid commenters flooding forums with negative reviews) was blamed for Asura's low score on Maoyan, China's equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes audience scores. But they completely withdrew the movie anyway.

"The decision was made not because of the box office," a representative for the studio claimed, "We plan to make some changes and release it again." Meanwhile, there was a suggestion that Asura's Western-style take on Eastern mythology may have failed to land with Chinese audiences but might fare better in an overseas release.

That was in June 2018 and it's been all quiet ever since. It's fair to say, then, that what was China's most expensive movie is likely to remain its most costly disappearing act.