A story with a touch of magic

Sort of a Chinese answer to Harry Potter, The Land of Warriors, the latest live-action adaptation of one of the country's best-selling fantasy novels, debuted online on Monday.

The novel, Douluo Dalu, or Soul Land, was serialized online from 2008 to 2010. Due to its immense popularity, it has been adapted into an animated series, cartoons, and TV episodes, and has propelled its author Zhang Wei, better known by his pen name Tang Jia San Shao, to the top of the Chinese Online Writers Rich List consecutively for two years.

The new story follows Tang San, a genius martial artist equipped with magic-like skills, to team up with six of his friends and peers from a school specializing in training super-ability talents as they embark on new adventures.

Bai Yicong, the chief executive producer, revealed that he was captivated by the daredevil and imaginative world created in Soul Land. He wished to bring the dazzling world and its brave warriors to life, drawing on his previous experience adapting renowned adventure-themed novels into screen projects.

The drama held advanced screenings at five colleges in Beijing, Wuhan in Hubei province, and Chengdu in Sichuan province, with some students praising the show as "China's Harry Potter".

According to the producers, a wide casting campaign was conducted before filming, selecting around 400 actors from a pool of 8,000. Additionally, the art department created over 9,200 paintings depicting character designs, settings, and props, and constructed a total of 67 filming sites on soundstages, as well as tailoring over 15,000 props.