Li weaves a wider web with Sino-Australian coproduction

The film, set in a remote part of China, unfolds with the scientist and her team looking for her missing brother in a tomb, which contains the remains of a Chinese emperor buried over 2,000 years ago.

"I liked the story. It harmoniously mixed Chinese and Western culture," says Li. "Right now, China's movie market is changing very rapidly. And many foreigners want to know more about Chinese culture and history."

As for how the story was developed, director Kimble Rendall says he once saw some ancient paintings in Australia featuring Chinese ships, inspiring him to create a story about how funnel web spiders, a species exclusive to Australia, were brought to China.

In the film, the expedition encounters hundreds of attackers and a swarm of spiders. For the movie, the special-effects team studied more than 40,000 species of spiders and spent 15 months designing the computer-generated creatures.

Speaking about the creatures, Deng Shuo, another producer, says: "The hair and texture are very vivid. This is because we recruited some worldclass talent in visual effects to work on the movie."

With rivals such as the Indian film Secret Superstar and local movie Forever Young also vying for screen space, Guardians of the Tomb raked in just 20 million yuan ($3.12 million) on its opening day to take the fourth spot on the domestic box office charts.

And with mixed reviews — where some viewers criticized what they saw as a series of plot holes — the film seems to be having a bumpy box-office ride.