China’s latest box office draw: spy thriller backed by state espionage agency

Scare Out, directed by Zhang Yimou, who is best known internationally for films such as Raise the Red Lantern and House of Flying Daggers, was produced under the direct supervision of the Ministry of State Security, which said the film was based on real-life cases.The film features a tense game of cat and mouse as counter-espionage agents track down a researcher who leaked information about a stealth fighter to foreign spies, but then discover that there is a mole within their own ranks.The movie did not specify the model of the fighter jet involved but a similar case was made public in March last year involving a Chinese engineer who leaked secrets to foreign spies and was later sentenced to death.Some overseas media outlets suggested that the case was related to the FC-31 fifth-generation stealth fighter, the basis of another model that later became the J-35 stealth fighter.The film has so far taken in 483 million yuan (US$70 million) in the first three days of the Year of the Horse, putting it second behind the motor-racing comedy Pegasus 3, which took in 1.5 billion yuan, according to Maoyan, a Chinese movie-ticketing and film data platform.