Back in April, we reported that Olga Kurylenko was heading up a $100 million dollar Chinese 3D movie production with the “Avatar” 3D camera operator Anthony Arendt lending his talents to the production. Co-directed by Michael French and Jonathan Lawrence, and starring no one else of note, we thought the plot — which “tells about a young man’s adventure in the undersea mermaid kingdom in order to save his father, while encountering ferocious sea monsters and gets involved in large-scale battles in the seabed between mermaids, monsters and demons” — sounded ridiculous, but we never thought it would be trumped by the costumes.
Set pictures from the production have hit Facebook and they look atrociously bad. It looks like the costumes have been put together by the interior designers of Florida retirements homes; have you ever seen so much pastel? The weapons and battle gear pictured looks positively plastic, but they do say the camera adds ten pounds. So this is what $100 million dollars buys you in China? Well, we have seen our fair share of crap in 99-cent stores, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Could they have come up with a less imaginative version of an undersea world? Are those seashell brassieres and coral headpieces? Yeesh. Somewhere an ambitious high school play is missing their set design.
At one point, the film was set to be directed by Pitof (*cough*”Catwoman”*cough*) and starring Monica Bellucci, and really, we don’t think he could’ve done any worse, but at least we would’ve had the benefit of Bellucci in three dimensions. No word yet on who will bring this film to theaters on this side of the ocean, but we wish them the best of luck. More photos after the jump: