1. "Operation Red Sea"

It is weird to have a hard-liner, and even violent R-rated, military blockbuster in a celebratory season of Spring Festival, but "Operation Red Sea" could arouse the nations pride and patriotism.

As China's first modern naval film, "Operation Red Sea" is loosely based on the evacuation of the 225 foreign nationals and almost 600 Chinese citizens from Yemen's southern port of Aden during the 2015 Yemeni Civil War in late March. It was the same event that inspired the highest grossing Chinese film ever "Wolf Warriors 2" which grossed 5.68 billion yuan (US$874 million) in 2017.

"Operation Red Sea," directed by Dante Lam and starring Zhang Yi, Huang Jingyu, Hai Qing, Du Jiang and Prince Mak, will continue in similar style to that of Lam's "Operation Mekong."

With a budget of 500 million yuan (US$78.88 million), Lam focused the production on realness, which includes 50 types of real guns, 30,000 bullets and various other weapons and military vehicles. He refused to shoot the film at production sets in studios and went with all the crew to Africa to shoot the film for four months. It has received unprecedented generous help from the Chinese navy and Moroccan government, including the Chinese army leasing a 1.4 billion-yuan warship while Morocco leased tanks to the production team.

Although it currently has average box office presales compared with other blockbusters, its producer Yu Dong, president of Polybona Films, believes "Operation Red Sea" could be the biggest dark horse and eventual biggest winner of the Spring Festival race when word-of-mouth spreads. The film has already been shown to the industry insiders and film critics before its release, receiving the highest scores and reviews among all films to screen this season.

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