Russians have sued Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger who did not live up to their hopes

When a new film is being shot, both the producers and the crew hope that it will become at least an Oscar nominee. But this does not always happen, and therefore financial risks cannot be avoided. The adventure thriller "The Secret of the Dragon Seal", which became a continuation of the film "Viy 3D", failed at the box office and the "Russian Film Group", which invested the project, now requires reimbursement of expenses.

According to the RFG's lawsuit, the defendants are China Film Group and actors Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger personally. According to the Russian edition of Vedomosti, the amount of claims is 216.6 million rubles. The company China Film Group is a co—producer of the film "Secrets of the Dragon Seal" and Jackie and Arnie had the misfortune to play episodic roles in this Russian-Chinese sludge.

The film "Viy 3D", the sequel of which is "The Secret of the Dragon Seal", turned out to be not so bad, having collected 1.2 billion rubles at the box office. Inspired by the success of the film, the top managers of the Russian Film Group did not hesitate to invest 216.6 million and later another 84.4 million rubles in shooting the picture, which, to put it mildly, "did not go" in China.

The Russian company failed to pay off its loans on time and was declared bankrupt in 2017. The film's producer Alexey Petrukhin categorically denies the legitimacy of the RFG's claims, as he is sure that the funds did not come from private investors, but from the state Cinema Fund.

Alexey Petrukhin, film producer

In an interview with journalists, Petrukhin stressed that the financial problems of the RFG do not concern either Chinese investors from the China Film Group, or even more so the actors who took part in the filming. He is sure that the plaintiff does not have the slightest chance to recover 216 million rubles and their troubles about this are just a waste of time and PR.

There is no information yet about how Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger reacted to the lawsuit. There have been failures in the work of these mega-popular stars, but there are not so many of them. It is quite possible that it would be better for the actors if the continuation of "Viya" remained gathering dust on the shelf in the form of a script.