Thomas Tull waseight years old when heirst heard
that the Great Wall Of China is the only man-made object you
can see from space. Like all powerful myths, it lodged itself in this New
York boy’s imagination and dug its roots in deep, never to be withered
by the fact it’s totally untrue. “It might be an urban myth, but I found it
fascinating,” Tull says now. “I couldn’t get it out of my head.” Questions
buzzed around his young mind: “Why would they build something like
that? What were they trying to keep out?”
It wasn’t until 2010 that the answer — the mythical answer, that is
— came to him, during a trip (of course) to China. By this point, Tull
was 40 years old and had set up the appropriately named Legendary
Entertainment, a production outit specialising in bombastic sci-i and
fantasy ilms such asThe Dark Knight,Watchmen,Clash Of The Titans
andInception. “I started thinking, ‘Well, what if this feat of engineering
— this incredible undertaking that required sheer force of will — was
really to repel not people or a band of raiders, but mythical creatures?”
That was the moment Thomas Tull started building hisown Great Wall.
For years now,Hollywood has had to adapt to the
rapid growth and intensifying enthusiasm of Chinese cinema audiences;
according to the most conident current estimates, China will be the world’s
biggest ilm market in just two years. It’s a tough market to crack, though,
given the strict state controls over the business there, not to mention the
differences in audience taste and sensibility. One way in has been to cast
Chinese stars in prominent roles (such as Jiang Wen and Donnie Yen in
Rogue One); another more recent development has been to co-produce with
Chinese companies — the approach taken by Warner Bros.’ New
Zealand-shot Statham-versus-giant-shark movieMeg, due out in early- Tull, however, has taken it a step further.The Great Wallis the
irst-ever Hollywood-sourced movie to be made in China by a Chinese
director, with a mostly Chinese cast and a Chinese/Western crew. Oh, and
with an estimated budget of $150 million, it’s also the most expensive movie
ever ilmed in the country. It is a whole new kind of blockbuster.
Not that he was playing a smartly strategic long game, insists Tull, whose
company is now owned by a Chinese conglomerate (the Dalian Wanda
Group bought Legendary for $3.5 billion in January 2016). “The Chinese
market was not then what it is now,” he says of the time the creative spark
irst happened, “and it wasn’t fashionable to be doing this. I’d love to tell
you there was a plan to get here, but the Great Wall is an iconic worldwide
image, so I just thought it would be cool to set a story around that.”
Tull put together a story outline with his friend andWorld War Z
novelist Max Brooks, which over the past six years has been through several
screenwriters and countless permutations. Back in 2012, it was all set to roll
in New Zealand and China withLast Samuraidirector Ed Zwick, and
Henry Cavill, Ben Walker and Zhang Ziyi in the lead roles, until the project
crumbled under the pressure of studio politics (Legendary was coming to