On May 15, Liu Zhou officially joined the crew of Three Kingdoms: Red Cliff.
The two-part film Three Kingdoms: Red Cliff spanned the entire Battle of Red Cliffs and required a large number of filming locations. However, due to the fame of the film, all the filming locations, including the studios, provided their grounds to the production crew free of charge. Yet, free did not mean a loss for the locations; on the contrary, they made out like bandits. This was because many of the sites required the crew to spend a tremendous amount of capital to construct or transform them into the settings demanded by the movie. For instance, at Zhuozhou Film and Television City, the crew spent tens of millions of yuan to build and modify various sets. Similarly, the commander's platform constructed inside the Fangshan Shidu Scenic Area was fully funded by the crew. In the end, all these newly built or modified structures would be left behind. Indeed, riding on the fame of Three Kingdoms: Red Cliff, many of these places would later transform into brand-new tourist attractions, with future generations frequently invoking the film's name to draw in visitors.
Set design could arguably be called the crew's largest single expense. Beyond the sets, costumes, makeup, and props constituted another massive cost. Among these, the most expensive items were the dozens of actual or scaled-model towering warships and battle junks ordered for the production, all of which were destined to be completely bur…
Chapter 173