Coming to theaters in February, A Writer's Odyssey is a live-action film in which an author faces the chaos in a book he's written mysteriously beginning to affect the real world.
The trailer for the film, which is a production of China's CMC Pictures and subtitled for English-speaking viewers, explains that Lu Kongwen (Dong Zijian) has written a novel called The Godslayer, a title which becomes literal and threatens everything.
As the apparent source of the mayhem, Lu is targeted by an assassin, Guan Ning (Lei Jiayin). He's also up against a demonic entity, Redmane, who he seems to recognize as his own creation, a villain from his series about "a heroic teenager on a quest to end a demon's tyrannical rule."
The trailer doesn't reveal how Lu's novel has forced its way into the real world, although it's possible that nobody in the film understands this "strange twist of fate," either. Another character tells Lu, "You're writing the novel. Can't you decide what happens?" and the question appears to spark a revelation, suggesting that the author does indeed have the power to bring the world back to normal.
A poster for the film was also released, showing the demon's rampage and the tagline, "Rewrite the reality."
Although the film is apparently set in the modern world to begin with, the elements of Lu's novel transform it into an ancient battlefield full of monsters and airships like traditional Eastern dragon floats. The signs of influence from The Godslayer are subtle at first, with a nosebleed and someone's suspicion that the novel is affecting his health, but later sequences show one world being exchanged for another. Some scenes even resemble the action from a video game, although their significance can't be defined.
A repeated motif in the trailer is an emphasis on the villain's godlike status and Lu's comparative helplessness. "A mere mortal," sneers a voice, "Dare to slay a god?" Given the title of Lu's novel, it seems the tables will be turned when he embraces his own power.
A Writer's Odyssey is based on the novel by Shuang Xuetao and directed by Lu Yang, with Ning Hao as executive producer. It stars Dong Zijian, Lei Jiayin, Yang Mi, Yu Hewei, Guo Jingfei and Tong Liya. The film will be released in theaters on February 12, 2021.