China to invest $15 million in sequel to Russian blockbuster Viy

China is set to invest $15 million in a sequel to Russia’s 2014 top-grossing domestic film, Viy (known internationally as Forbidden Empire), marking the first ever joint Russia-China film production. Chinese investment will cover just under half of the film’s announced budget of $36 million, a figure significantly increased from the original film’s budget of $26 million.

“Today, we have already passed the [Chinese] censors… We have already agreed on a contract with the largest state-owned company China Film Group, which is going to be our distributor,” producer Alexey Petrukhin told Izvestia. “All preliminary activities for the project have been confirmed — we have corrected all the errors and slightly rewritten the script, though we didn’t have to sacrifice anything, just made some changes to strengthen and improve the script in light of Chinese culture.”

Viy 2: Trip to China follows the story of a 18th-century British traveller who ends up in China after being commissioned by Russian Tsar Peter the Great to produce maps of the Russian Far East, meeting magicians and the king of dragons along the way.

The first Viy film was based on the Nikolai Gogol story and was a co-production between Russia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. The film brought in $34 million at the Russian box office in the year of its release, making it the highest-grossing Russian film in 2014 and the third highest in Russia of all time. Last month, American actors Jason Flemyng and Rutger Hauer, who are to star in the sequel, agreed to a significant pay cut in light of Russia’s financial plight, The Hollywood Reporter reported.