Up on the All the Anime blog I chronicle the weird background of Raman Hui’s Monster Hunt, which briefly became the biggest-ever film at the Chinese box office. “Critics are at a loss to explain why this particular film should have been the one to recapture the flag of Chinese distribution. A cynic might point out that by the time it was released, it was literally too big to fail, having notched up an additional US$70 million in extra costs after its original leading man, Kai Ko, was arrested in Beijing for smoking marijuana. Determined not to risk a China-wide release with a court case hanging over their hero, producers authorised the parachuting of Jing Boran into the lead role, requiring all his scenes to be reshot, along with a quarter of all the effects sequences. Effectively, the film went to market having cost double its original budget – you bet the owners were keen to keep it running longer than its rivals.”