Crawdads Sing a hopeful lament

Although China's movie market has been sluggish for a long time due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it's hoped that a slew of new movies will help to reignite the enthusiasm of theatergoers.

On the heels of the Japanese animated feature Detective Conan: The Bride of Halloween, high-grossing Hollywood romance flick Where the Crawdads Sing opened across Chinese mainland on Friday, more than four months after it was released in the United States.

Starring actress Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kya Clark, a young woman who grows up alone in the marshlands of North Carolina, the movie sees the protagonist caught in the middle of a murder investigation when one of the two men with whom she is romantically involved is found dead, making her the prime suspect.

The movie is adapted from the novel of the same name by American writer Delia Owens, which has sold 15 million copies and has featured on The New York Times' bestseller list since it was published in 2018 — for nearly 190 weeks.

Elizabeth Gabler, president of Sony Picture Entertainment-owned 3000 Pictures, which presents the movie in association with Harper-Collins Publishers, tells China Daily that she had previously worked with Owens to develop one of her nonfiction books into a film.

Gabler says the book is about the writer's life in Africa, but it never became a film. She says she was excited when she heard that Owens had finally written her novel, a wish that the writer had held for a long time.

With a master's degree in zoology and a PhD in animal behavior, Owens worked as a wildlife scientist for more than two decades in Africa. Her inspiration of the novel started from her childhood, when she was encouraged by her mother to get close to nature.

Recalling that American star Reese Witherspoon picked the book for her Reese's Book Club, a monthly pick that spotlights female authors, Gabler says she was completely captivated by the novel and its young protagonist, a wild and independent girl who survives with the skills learned in nature, while bravely facing down discrimination from residents of a nearby town.

"The young girl successfully makes a life of her own, despite the fact that one hardship after another is thrown at her. I was very much emotionally involved with the character. I was also captivated by the natural landscape and the descriptions of the natural world in which she lives," Gabler adds.

Despite the story being set in North Carolina, the movie was shot in and around Houma and New Orleans in Louisiana, as there was a concentration of locations matching the scenery depicted in the novel — from the salt marsh to the beach and the swamps.

"The reason that we went there (Louisiana) instead was that the coast of North Carolina has been developed a lot. It doesn't look the way that the marshes looked in the period in which the film is set," says Gabler.

When the primary photography took place between March and July last year, there were numerous unexpected challenges from adverse weather to some, potentially dangerous, "bystanders".

Recalling that the shoot was not affected by the pandemic due to fortunate timing and its comparatively small cast, Gabler says the massive rainfall brought by some storms caused bigger trouble.

"We had to stop filming one day. The rain was so heavy that the crew was very worried about getting home. They were worried about crossing the bridge in New Orleans to where they lived. It was the most rain I had ever seen. I heard it flooded up to our set," she recalls.

When some of the night scenes were shot, Gabler says the crew spotted some alligators watching them from the water, while the crew were being harassed by swarms of insects in the woods.

"From that perspective, it was definitely not an easy movie for the actors and the crew," says Gabler.

With her team at 3000 Pictures, Gabler, a former president at Fox 2000, has produced some blockbusters that are very familiar to Chinese theatergoers, such as the Meryl Streep vehicle The Devil Wears Prada and director Ang Lee's multiple Oscar-winning Life of Pi.

Depicting Lee as a brilliant director with a strong vision to clearly know how to turn words into a screenplay and movie, she recalls that the four-year production journey of Life of Pi was full of hard moments, varying from the use of real tigers to tailoring a lot of computer generated imagery and spending a lot of time in the water.

"The biggest thing was who was going to play the boy (the titular role, Pi Patel). The director interviewed many young actors. Suraj Sharma was not an actor, but was attending the audition with his brother, and all he wanted was to get a hamburger after the audition. But they said: 'Why don't you try the part, too?' So, he did it and that's how Ang picked him," recalls Gabler.

Graduating with a major in English literature from University of California, Santa Barbara, Gabler is known in Hollywood for her preference for, and excellence in, adapting best-selling books into films.

Klara and the Sun, the eighth novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, has been acquired by 3000 Pictures and will also be adapted into a movie.

"I do look for really interesting stories that feature very diverse cultures. And I believe in casting diverse actors as well … I would love to have a Chinese actress play the role of Klara, for example," she says.

Currently, with Where the Crawdads Sing being screened in cinemas, the most special and comforting thing for the Hollywood veteran is to see the movie bring audiences back to theaters.

However, with more than half of the country's cinemas still closed due to pandemic, coupled with James Cameron's long-awaited tent-pole Avatar: The Shape of Water, set to be imported in a couple of weeks, the market prospect of Where the Crawdads Sing in China remains uncertain.

Currently, the movie has earned a high score of 7.7 points out of 10 on the popular Chinese review aggregator Douban, but, as of Tuesday, according to the live tracker Beacon, its box-office takings have stood at a mere 3.5 million yuan ($488,250).