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Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons

Tang Sanzang, an aspiring Buddhist hero tries to protect a village from three demons. He develops complex feelings for Miss Duan, the demon hunter who repeatedly helps him, and finally quest... Read all Tang Sanzang, an aspiring Buddhist hero tries to protect a village from three demons. He develops complex feelings for Miss Duan, the demon hunter who repeatedly helps him, and finally quests to meet the legendary Monkey King. Tang Sanzang, an aspiring Buddhist hero tries to protect a village from three demons. He develops complex feelings for Miss Duan, the demon hunter who repeatedly helps him, and finally quests to meet the legendary Monkey King.

• Stephen Chow
• Chi-Kin Kwok
• 65 User reviews
• 51 Critic reviews
• 68 Metascore
• 2 wins & 21 nominations

• Prince Important

• Master Nameless

• Fist of the North Star
• (as Xingyu)

• Killer Wu …

• Taoist Priest

• Almighty Foot
• (as Charlie Zhang)

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia This was the highest grossing film of 2013 in China, making 1.247 billion yuan.
• Goofs Set in ancient China, the female demon hunter Killer Si has shaved armpits, something unheard of in that period.
• Connections Followed by Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back (2017)
• Soundtracks Love In A Life Time Composed by Lowell Lo Original Lyrics by Tang Shu Chen Lyrics by Wendyz Zheng Performed by Shu Qi Imar Music Entertainment Co., Ltd. Rock Music Publishing Co., Ltd.

User reviews 65

• May 24, 2013
• How long is Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons? Powered by Alexa
• February 7, 2013 (China)
• Official Site
• Heng Dian, China
• Bingo Movie Development
• Film Workshop
• Huayi Brothers Media
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Mar 9, 2014
• $205,637,183

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 50 minutes
• Dolby Atmos

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Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons

Original title: 西游·降魔篇.

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In a world plagued by demons who cause great human suffering, young demon hunter Tang Sanzang must fight against monstrous demons, as well as contend with a beautiful demon hunting woman on his path to enlightenment.

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• New York Post Lou Lumenick The final product is very much Chow - with elaborately staged stunts, slapstick inspired by silent Hollywood, and a silliness that will appeal to kids (as well as some black humor that may take some explaining for younger audiences).
• AV Club Ignatiy Vishnevetsky Conquering The Demons feels like a Chow movie through and through; as in his other films, much of its charm rests in the intermingling of the very high-concept and the very lowbrow.
• RogerEbert.com Christy Lemire By turns daffy and dazzling, awkward and artful, "Journey to the West" takes an ancient tale and gives it contemporary flair.
• New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman Chow's movies are always as sweet as they are silly, a combination he once again balances - alongside cool effects - with typically deft irreverence.
• Slant Magazine Kenji Fujishima Stephen Chow's distinctive vision is evident in the seemingly boundless imagination of his scenarios, and in the film's sincere spiritual concerns and generosity toward misfits and outsiders.
• CinemaBlend Kristy Puchko There's a grandness to the action sequences, playful allusions to 'Jaws,' and a great feel for the spectacular. It's just a shame its story gets lost in translation.
• Variety Ronnie Scheib Another exquisite, snail-paced cinematic perambulation from Tsai Ming-liang and Lee Kang-sheng.
• Film Comment Magazine Grady Hendrix A kung fu comedy, a Chinese fairy story, a Buddhist action movie, a prequel to a mega-series that makes James Cameron's ambitions look puny, Chow's Journey to the West is everything that is good about China's mega-blockbuster inclinations.
• New Yorker Richard Brody Liang's ravishing conceptual film achieves a rare blend of sensuous delight and documentary specificity.
• New York Magazine/Vulture Bilge Ebiri Journey to the West works so well because Chow has a flair for grand comic-action set pieces, and his imagination seems to actually draw energy from these rapid-fire tonal shifts.
• New York Times Nicolas Rapold Mr. Chow has perhaps achieved more sustained and elaborate adventures, but he hits a sweet spot of comedy that never grows too self-aware or forgets the value of a good, clean demon whomping.
• Los Angeles Times Sheri Linden Stephen Chow's dazzling comic fantasy about a gentle Buddhist demon hunter.
• Village Voice Nick Schager The camera swoops and whooshes about but never generates any compelling energy - Chow's film proves endlessly manic but devoid of much mirth.
• Movie Mezzanine Jesse Knight For all the exaggerated facial expressions and flailing limbs, Chow keeps a high-wire balance with an intrinsic sense of pace that perishes all possibility of action fatigue.
• IGN Movies Matt Patches Director Stephen Chow's action fantasy film Journey to the West is a miss, but a wild, reverent, explosive miss.
• About.com Eric D. Snider Characteristically bug-eyed and silly, by turns creative, clever, and exhausting.
• Nerdist Witney Seibold Journey to the West is an episodic picaresque epic, moving from set piece to set piece without the traditional Western screenplay-101 contrivances, allowing for a more casual, freewheeling, adventurous tone.
• PopMatters Bill Gibron While we don't get to see him personally up there amongst the heroes and demons, (Chow's) stamp is all over Journey to the West. It's what makes this flight of fantasy so much escapist fun.
• TheDivaReview.com Diva Velez The cast is extremely funny and the movie will entertain viewers new to his work, but happy as I am to see anything from the multi-talented Stephen Chow, for this longtime fan, the movie feels a bit empty without his comedic onscreen presence.
• The Robot's Voice Luke Y. Thompson There's not an actor in this movie, from the leads down to the extras, who doesn't mug like crazy, and there's not a moment onscreen that isn't utterly ridiculous. That, however, was clearly the goal

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Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons

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Watch Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons with a subscription on Hulu, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

As sweet, silly, action-packed and ridiculous as director Steven Chow's best work, Journey to the West serves up dazzling action sequences while playing its disparate elements against each other with thrilling abandon.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Stephen Chow

Chi-kin Kwok

Fist of the North Star

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Journey to the West

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Fist of the North Star

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• Average 7.2

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© 2013 Bingo Movie Development

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"ONE OF HONG KONG’S MOST POPULAR ACTOR-DIRECTORS EVER… STEPHEN CHOW IS BACK IN BOX-OFFICE STORMING FORM" - The Hollywood Reporter

"A BONAFIDE MASTERPIECE" - The Wrap

"SPECTACULAR" - Variety

"Some of the most outrageous visual effects yet seen in the cinema." - SHOCKYA.COM

"Stephen (Chow) is able to make us feel like giddy children again." - WEGOTTHISCOVERED.COM

"(Stephen) Chow at his weirdest and most entertaining." - AVCLUB.COM

"Hilarious and oddly reverent." - FILMJOURNAL.COM

"Alluring" - NY Post

"Delightful blend of fantasy, action, comedy and romance." - NY Post

"Dazzling" - LA Times

"Jaw-dropping visual inventiveness" - LA Times

"The film finds the sweet spot between spoofy and sincere, rollicking and dark." - LA Times

"Might Be Stephen Chow’s Craziest Movie Yet." - Vulture

"It’s a pageant of eye-popping strangeness." - Vulture

"Rarely is it that a CGI-heavy spectacle such as this could be called both entertaining and inspiring in the same breath, but such is the unexpectedly special magic of Journey to the West." - Slant

"A must watch for any fans of Chinese kung fu films and Stephen Chow." - NERD REACTOR

ABOUT THE FILM

In a world plagued by demons who cause great human suffering, young demon hunter Xuan Zang risks his all to conquer a water demon, a pig demon and the demon of all demons, Sun Wukong. Adhering to his firm belief in giving of one’s self for the greater cause, he embraces the demons as his disciples. However, in order to atone for their own sins and save the common people, the four of them must embark on a journey to the West that’s full of challenges.

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By turns daffy and dazzling, awkward and artful, "Journey to the West" takes an ancient tale and gives it contemporary flair.

In adapting one of the Four Great Classical Novels of 16th-century Chinese literature, co-directors Stephen Chow and Derek Kwok have crafted a rollicking fantasy—a crazy fable that ultimately reaffirms the power of faith. Their giant martial-arts set pieces are nothing short of extraordinary; lively and lovely, they're filled with both great intricacy and innovation.

These scenes, which can be both wildly slapsticky and minutely graceful, provide the film with a winning, driving energy. And then when they're over, the characters unfortunately have to talk.

"Journey to the West" follows a goofy but sincere Buddhist monk named Xuan Zang ( Zhang Wen ), a young demon hunter who must vanquish a series of foes en route to his ultimate showdown with the notorious, shape-shifting Monkey King ( Bo Huang ). When we first see him, in the film's lengthy, tour-de-force opening sequence, he's helping a bunch of frightened villagers take down a giant, hungry fish that's leaping from the water and wreaking havoc. The comedy has a Mel Brooks-like sensibility about it that's appealing; it's playful in a deadly-serious situation. (Chow also directed the pleasingly cartoonish " Shaolin Soccer " and " Kung Fu Hustle .") But the choreography is undeniable: a breathtaking series of near misses and tricky balancing acts.

Xuan's preferred, absurd method of attack, per his mentor, is to tame the beasts by singing lullabies to them from a book called "300 Nursery Rhymes." The sweetness and innocence within Zhang's performance feels very Keanu Reeves circa "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," complete with a mop of wild hair. This is actually a compliment.

The rival demon hunter he keeps running into, a catlike creature known as Miss Duan ( Qi Shu ), favors a more direct strategy: She takes them on through balletic physical battles with the help of a magical golden bracelet—"The Infinite Flying Ring"—which she can duplicate countless times. As she flings the circles through the air like lethal boomerangs, her targets explode in a burst of dust. It's an awesome sight to behold.

But then "Journey to the West" has an episodic structure that saps it of much of the momentum it gains during those thrilling set pieces. Xuan and Duan have one adventure, then another, than another. They meet one eccentric character, then another, then another. There's a tiger demon and a pig demon. There's a preening royal known as Prince Important (clearly a friend of President Business from " The Lego Movie ") and an elderly man known as the Almighty Foot, whose shriveled limb expands to an enormous size when the time comes for him to stomp on his enemies. (He might have the best catch phrase ever: "Today, you will die by my almighty foot!")

Along the way, Xuan and Duan trade some stilted and truly cringe-worthy dialogue—initially about their conflicting strategies, eventually about the half-hearted romance that develops between them. Out of nowhere, Duan finds herself falling hard for her unlikely companion and throwing herself at him in increasingly elaborate ways.

Maybe it's written that way on the page, but on the screen—especially in a film that benefits from such a strong and fearless female—the sudden need to have a man define her is a disheartening cliché. Also, some of the interactions between the male characters carry more than a whiff of homophobia which seems archaic. Again, maybe that's from the source material. But a film that clearly went out of its way to appeal to modern audiences perhaps could have gone just a tiny bit further.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Journey to the West (2014)

Rated PG-13

110 minutes

Zhang Wen as Xuan Zang

Qi Shu as MIss Duan

Bo Huang as Monkey King

• Stephen Chow
• Derek Kwok Chi-Kin

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In a world plagued by demons who cause great human suffering, young demon hunter Xuan Zang risks his all to conquer a water demon, a pig demon and the demon of all demons, Sun Wukong.

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Rotten Tomatoes® Score

The kid friendly comical martial arts film draws only a smattering of laughs.

This tension between tradition and subversion results in a curiously unstable film; easy enough to watch in the moment, but unnaturally slippery in meaning.

Mildly entertaining with dazzling visual spectacle, but more silly, exhausting and outrageous rather than fun or funny.

impressive effects, feeble laughs, incoherent story

This time round, though, there's more high-spirited whimsy than laugh-out-loud humour.

Blockbuster sequel to Stephen Chow's Conquering the Demons has more action than comedy.

If anything, Demons Strike Back is an even zanier and more kid-friendly affair than the Chow original. Yet without Chow's unique strain of silliness, it also feels louder and more antic while covering less ground.

A madcap success on its own bizarre terms and an informative distillation of each auteur's sensibility.

A rare character-driven big-budget action-adventure - the kind of thing Americans might love if they knew it existed.

All spectacle and little substance, a stop-gap title produced perhaps to keep the brand going while the producers search for a way to bring the series forward.

Additional Info

• Genre : Fantasy, Comedy, Action
• Release Date : February 3, 2017
• Languages : Chinese
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : 5.1

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A leading independent film studio for 20 years, Magnolia Pictures is the theatrical and home entertainment distribution arm of the Wagner/Cuban Companies, boasting a library of over 500 titles.Recent releases include Sierra Pettengill’s kaleidoscopic all-archival documentary RIOTSVILLE, USA; SXSW Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award-winning comedy I LOVE MY DAD, starring Patton Oswalt; Concordia Studio and Wavelength’s sweeping American West documentary BITTERBRUSH; Martin Scorsese executive-produced documentary DREAMING WALLS: INSIDE THE CHELSEA HOTEL; stranger-than-fiction Sundance documentary MY OLD SCHOOL, starring Alan Cumming.

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Next Exit follows a research scientist (Karen Gillan, AVENGERS) who makes national news proving she can track people into the afterlife - Rose (Katie Parker, THE MIDNIGHT CLUB) sees a way out and Teddy (Rahul Kohli, MIDNIGHT MASS) sees his chance to finally make it.

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Product Description

One of the undisputed Chinese masters of comedy, Stephen Chow (SHAOLIN SOCCER; KUNG FU HUSTLE) returns with an action-packed love story about competing demon hunters vying for the same conquests.

Product details

• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.72 ounces
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ MGNO10663DVD
• Director ‏ : ‎ Stephen Chow, Derek Kwok, Chi-hin Kwok
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 50 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ May 27, 2014
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Lee Sheung Ching, Show Lo, Qi Shu, Zhang Wen, Bo Huang
• Dubbed: ‏ : ‎ English
• Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English, Spanish
• Producers ‏ : ‎ Stephen Chow, Ivy Kong
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Magnolia Home Ent
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00IIPL11Q
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #5,814 in Action & Adventure DVDs

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‘journey to the west: the demons strike back’ (‘xi you fu yao pian’): film review.

Tsui Hark takes the helm of 'Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back,' comedian-director Stephen Chow's sequel to his Monkey King escapade from 2013.

By Clarence Tsui

Clarence Tsui

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In a widely circulated trailer for Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back, the film’s producer Stephen Chow is shown being chastised and berated by director Tsui Hark for being an infantile good-for-nothing. It’s pure theater shaped for comical effect, of course — in reality, it’s Chow who recruited Tsui to direct the latest entry in his lucrative Monkey King franchise — but the play-acting is actually a fitting summary of the fruits of their collaboration.

A follow-up to Chow’s self-directed 2013 blockbuster Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons , The Demons Strike Back boasts the inventive, scintillating VFX-laden action scenes Tsui has now perfected to a tee with his Detective Dee films and The Taking of Tiger Mountain . But the thrilling imagery is also crucial in distracting audiences from Chow’s screenplay, which merely cruises along with its episodic narrative, rehashed gags and simplistic characters.

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Release date: Feb 03, 2017

Like most second films in franchises with an undefined end — think Pirates of the Caribbean  or Transformers — this latest entry in Chow’s Journey series is all spectacle and little substance, a stop-gap title produced perhaps to keep the brand going while the producers search for a way to bring the series forward. A canny crowd-pleaser to the last, Chow clearly knows who spends money in China these days, having replaced Conquering the Demons ‘ deft but older cast (Wen Zhang and Huang Bo) with a stellar array of younger, prettier faces (the Canadian-Chinese pop star Kris Wu, alongside pin-ups like Kenny Lin and Jelly Lin).

The Demons Strike Back is undemanding entertainment which fits the ambience of the Lunar New Year holiday season in China perfectly: There, the film is now well-placed to rewrite box-office records set this time last year by The Mermaid , a populist comedy directed by — who else? — Chow himself. Meanwhile,  Demons  should strike gold with  cinephiles (or sinophiles ) worldwide as some kind of spaced-out oddity. Never mind the confusing Chinese wordplay — where else could one find King Kong turning into something like the Hulk, and then watch the resulting creature sparring with massive golden Buddhas ?

Just like how filmmakers elsewhere reworked Jane Austen romance novels or Abraham Lincoln biopics as vampire flicks, Tsui and Chow have adapted characters and storylines from the 500-year-old Journey to the West novel into what could be described as a Chinese equivalent of Ghostbusters . Ever more so than Conquering the Demons — which chronicles the beginning of the master-disciple relationship between monk and monkey — The Demons Strike Back  conjures outlandish scenes from of the smattering of demonic possessions and derring-do exorcisms in its original literary source.

The film begins with the monk, Tang Sanzang (Wu), penniless and resorted to parading his paranormal disciples — the mischievous primate Sun Wukong (Lin Gengxin ), Pigsy (Yang Yiwei ) and Sandy (the former NBA player Menteke Bateer ) — as some kind of a freak show. Soon enough, the quartet’s fortunes pick up when they are called on to battle deadly devils in various guises, all of them a drastic reinterpretation of some monster in the Ming Dynasty novel: a spider with the body of a siren, an evil cherub holding a kingdom to ransom, and a female ghost rising to life to avenge her grisly death.

Throughout all this, The Demon Strikes Back soldiers loudly along, alternating between high-octane, digitally enhanced skirmishes and the equally cacophonic bickering between the monk and the monkey. Their never-ending rows and ruffles are monotonous to the extreme, and seem to only serve as an excuse for Tang Sanzang to deliver supposedly witty one-liners and the monkey to descend toward unfettered violence.

It’s hard to feel for them, or understand what cements their bromance — their personalities (and the way they are played out by Wu and Lin) are as simplistic and single-tracked as that of the other two disciples here. And that’s saying something, given how Pigsy has only one gag going for him — his crazed ogling and pursuit of women — and Sandy spends most of his screentime transformed into a giant fish.

Punctuating all this is the monk’s recollections of his past love, Duan (the uncredited Shu Qi , briefly reprising her role in a few short scenes) — the devil-hunter whom the monkey killed in Conquering the Demons . Perhaps hoping to inject some emotional gravity into The Demon Strikes Back , Chow’s decision to revisit this thread only highlights the lightweight relationships at play this time around. The monk’s love story in this film — with the enigmatic Felicity (Jelly Lin, the breakout star from The Mermaid ), who shares the appearance and Chinese name of the leading character in Tsui’s A Chinese Ghost Story — is too fleeting to leave a dramatic impact on the viewer.

With such a ragged premise and its reheated jokes — Chow is perhaps banking on a new generation of Chinese audiences being unaware of his classic “ mo lei tau” comedies from his 1990s heyday — Tsui and his crew have credibly teased out a technical marvel. For Chow, the ringing tills and surpassed box-office records should be a sign of how he could now afford to slow down, go back to the drawing board and decide how to bring his Journey to the West series to the pioneering, glorious end it deserves.

Production companies: Star Overseas, for a China Film Group, Hehe (Shanghai) Pictures, Xiangshan Zeyue Media, Premium Data Associates, Shanghai Tao Piao Piao Entertainment, Wanda Media, Guangzhou Jinyi Media Corporation, Zhejiang Hengdian Entertainment, Tianjin Maoyan Media, Maxtimes Culture ( Tianjin ) Films, Lianrui (Shanghai) Pictures, Huayi Brothers Media Group presentation Distributor: Sony Pictures Cast: Kris Wu, Kenny Lin, Yao Chen, Jelly Lin Director: Tsui Hark Screenwriters: Stephen Chow, with Kelvin Lee Producers: Tsui Hark, Nansun Shi, Stephen Chow Executive producers: La Peikang , Stephen Chow, Yang Wei, Wei Jie , Zhou Wenji , Li Jie , Zeng Moujun , Liu Rong , Li Xiaodong , Xu Tianfu , Chen Lizhi , Cai Yuan, Wang Zhongjun Director of photography: Choi Sung-fai Production designer: Yoshihito Akatsuka Costume designer: Lee Pik-kwan Editors: Tsui Hark, Li Lin, Zeng Wuxin Music: Raymond Wong

In Mandarin or Cantonese

108 minutes

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Watch: Full Trailer for Stephen Chow's Wacky 'Journey to the West'

by Alex Billington December 18, 2013 Source: Apple

"A quest to vanquish evil from this Earth will lead the world's greatest demon hunters to their ultimate challenge." Magnolia has debuted the official US trailer for Stephen Chow's latest movie Journey to the West , based on the classic Chinese story. This is the new film from the crazy mind behind Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle telling an old Chinese story but it still looks wacky. There's mythical beasts, mythical vehicles, flying weapons galore, a Monkey King, goofy CG-enhanced violence and an Earth-sized colorful Buddha doing who knows what. The story follows a Buddhist trying to protect a village from three demons. The cast includes Qi Shu , Zhang Wen , Bo Huang and Lo Show , but not Stephen Chow. Check this out!

Here's the full US trailer for Stephen Chow's Journey to the West , in high def on Apple :

This is a world plagued by demons, who cause its human inhabitants unspeakable suffering. Young demon hunter Xuan Zang, fearlessly guided by his belief in "giving himself for the greater cause," risks his all and conquers a water demon, a pig demon and the demon of all demons, Sun Wukong. He embraces them as his disciples, and melts them with love. Journey to the West is directed by Stephen Chow ( King of Comedy , Shaolin Soccer , Kung Fu Hustle & CJ7 ), co-directed by Chi-kin Kwok. The story is based on the classic tale from Chinese literature. After being first released in China earlier this year, Magnolia Pictures will finally release Journey to the West in select US theaters and on VOD starting March 7th early in 2014. Curious?

For more updates on Stephen Chow's Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons , visit their official site .

Find more posts: Foreign Films , To Watch , Trailer

12 Comments

Thank You mr.Stephen Genius

Ehsan Davodi on Dec 18, 2013

Dafuuuuuuq.

Nielsen700 on Dec 18, 2013

Wants to see!

MeriMakr8298 on Dec 18, 2013

All dat hair.

DAVIDPD on Dec 18, 2013

I am teh audiencez!

ErrorSapiens on Dec 18, 2013

Will defo be watching this one.

Carpola on Dec 18, 2013

the oversize leg sold me on this one

kungfuhustlefan on Dec 18, 2013

Kung Fu Hustle is one of my faves. I have GOT to watch this one.

Nick Perkins on Dec 18, 2013

Love Stephen Chow's movies. Always so interesting. So glad he passed up that stupid Green Hornet movie to keep making his own movies. Can't wait!!

TK on Dec 18, 2013

SWEEET!! Been too long without some Stephen Chow, love his films! Bummed he doesn't appear to be in it, but dammit I can't wait!

grimjob on Dec 18, 2013

What an absolutely amazing story. Just watched this. Really impressed by it and Stephen Chow's direction. Beginning was a bit slow but man, dat ending...

lmfaoRetardedSmashFan on Dec 18, 2013

Can't wait to watch Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons in US theaters!

JW on Jan 12, 2014

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Cast Assembled for ‘The Guns of Muschu’ Australian Wartime Survival Film

By Patrick Frater

Patrick Frater

Asia Bureau Chief

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Epic war-time survival tale “ The Guns of Muschu ” has already assembled a weighty cast ahead of a production start in the first quarter of 2025.

The film is an adaptation of the non-fiction book “The Guns of Muschu,” written by Don Dennis, with an adapted screenplay by Tom Broadhurst and Jack Brislee (“Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan”). The narrative brings to life a pivotal chapter of Australian war history with gritty authenticity, recounting the high body count Operation Copper , a mission during WWII when Australian and New Zealand troops were sent into the jungles of Papua New Guinea.

Popular on Variety

To be directed by Matthew Holmes (“The Legend of Ben Hall,” “The Cost”), the production has cast Ben Hall (“Warnie,” “Devil’s Playground,” “Better Man”) in the lead role as Dennis. The film has also already attached Australian actors Matt Day (“Sweet Country”), Callan McAuliffe (“The Walking Dead”), Jordan Fraser-Trumble (“The Legend of Ben Hall”), Gerald Lepkowski (“The Death of Stalin”), Maximillian Johnson (“High Ground”), Clayton Watson (“The Matrix Reloaded”), Damon Hunter (“The Cost”) and Arthur Angel (“Red Dog”).

Production is by Rally Point Media, RLC Motion Picture Entertainment and Two Tone Pictures, a repeat of the collaboration that led to 2017’s “The Legend of Ben Hall” and thriller “The Cost” last year.

Delivery of the completed picture is targeted for the first quarter of 2026, in time for an Australian theatrical distributor to reach cinema screens by Anzac Day [April 25] in 2026. No local distributor or international sales representative has yet been attached.

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