General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms (封神第一部：朝歌风云)

Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms (封神第一部：朝歌风云) is a 2023 Chinese fantasy epic film directed by Wuershan (乌尔善) and the first installment of the Creation of the Gods trilogy, adapted from the Ming-dynasty novel Investiture of the Gods (封神演义) and the Song-Yuan storyteller script Wu Wang Fa Zhou Pinghua (武王伐纣平话). It was released in mainland China on 20 July 2023, runs 148 minutes, and earned 2.634 billion yuan at the mainland box office.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Chinese and English titles	封神第一部：朝歌风云; Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms¹
Director and writers	Directed by Wuershan; written by Ran Ping, Ran Jianan, Wuershan, and Cao Sheng³
Release	20 July 2023 (China); 22 September 2023 (United States, Well Go USA)¹^•⁴
Box office	2.634 billion yuan in mainland China, 60.68 million admissions; $373,044,244 worldwide²^•⁵
Production scale	Three films shot back-to-back over 18 months and 438 shooting days; more than 8,000 pre-production and shooting staff and 1,565 post-production staff⁶^•⁷
Principal cast	Fei Xiang (Yin Shou), Li Xuejian (Ji Chang), Huang Bo (Jiang Ziya), Yu Shi (Ji Fa), Chen Muchi (Yin Jiao), Naran (Daji)³
Major awards	Golden Rooster Award for Best Feature Film, Best Cinematography, and Best Supporting Actor (36th, 2023); Huabiao Award for Outstanding Feature Film (20th, 2025)¹

Spoilers

Plot

The film is set at the end of the Shang dynasty. King Yin Shou of Shang (殷寿, the King Zhou of tradition), played by Fei Xiang, consorts with a fox demon that has possessed Su Daji (妲己, played by Naran); his tyranny brings down punishment from Heaven. The immortal Jiang Ziya (姜子牙, played by Huang Bo) descends from Kunlun with Nezha (哪吒, Wu Yafan) and Yang Jian (杨戬, Ci Sha), carrying the Fengshen Bang (封神榜), the list by which gods are invested, to find a ruler of all under heaven who can save the people. Crown prince Yin Jiao (殷郊, Chen Muchi) and Ji Fa (姬发, Yu Shi), a hostage-son of the Count of the West, come to see Yin Shou's cruelty and rise against him, and Ji Fa flees the capital Zhaoge (朝歌).⁸^•¹

A central invention is the "hostage corps" (质子旅): the film imagines the feudal lords' sons held at the Shang court as hostages and trained as warriors under Yin Shou, whom the young Ji Fa first worships as a father figure. The dramatic pivot is the confrontation at Longde Hall, where Ji Fa first disobeys the king and begins to test whether his idol has any truth behind him.⁹ Wuershan has said the first film is deliberately a story of the human world, an awakening story of "the tyrant's misrule and the lords' revolt against Zhaoge," with the second film devoted to defending Xiqi and the third to King Wu's campaign and the investiture of the gods.¹⁰

Sources and adaptation

The screenplay draws on two texts the film credits on screen: the Ming novel Investiture of the Gods and the much earlier Wu Wang Fa Zhou Pinghua, a storyteller script of roughly 20,000 characters in three scrolls whose main characters are Yin Jiao and Jiang Ziya and which lacks the Kunlun immortals of the later novel. Wuershan and his co-writers also consulted historical texts including the Shangshu, condensing and recombining material to fit three films of two to three hours each.¹⁰^•¹¹ In the film, the Fengshen Bang is reworked into an object that concentrates the souls of the dead into a power only a universally acknowledged common lord can invoke, a change Wuershan described as giving the story a single focal line that every faction must follow.¹⁰

Production

A decade-long project. Wuershan began planning the trilogy in 2014, with the first script meeting that year and four to five years of scriptwriting before filming began in 2018; shooting wrapped in January 2020. The reported total investment for the trilogy is 3 billion yuan.⁷^•¹¹^•¹² The three films were shot back-to-back, a first for Chinese-language cinema, which the producers calculated saved about 25 percent of budget compared with shooting separately and kept the young cast's appearances consistent; the shoot ran 18 months over 438 shooting days, with more than 8,000 registered pre-production and shooting staff and over 1,500 in post-production.⁶^•⁷^•¹¹

The training camp. Because the leads required the skills of ancient warriors, the production created the Fengshen Performing Arts Training Camp (封神演艺训练营) and began recruiting in February 2017. Yu Shi and more than 20 other young actors were selected from 15,000 applicants and trained for 24 weeks in closed, high-intensity courses built on the classical "six arts," including martial arts, horsemanship, archery, drum and guqin music, pre-Qin history, and etiquette.⁹^•¹³

Design and locations. The crew spent about two years on research, visiting more than 20 provinces and over 40 museums and historic sites and consulting ancient climate specialists. Costume design draws on Yuan- and Ming-dynasty water-land paintings, decorative patterns on Shang bronzes and jades, and, for Daji's costumes, the Tang scroll Eighty-seven Immortals and Gu Kaizhi's Admonitions of the Instructress to the Palace Ladies.⁶^•¹⁴ The production entered the Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis in February 2018 and used its large soundstages, with exterior sets at Huangdao standing in for Zhaoge, Zangma Mountain for Xiqi, and location work in Nyingchi, Tibet.¹⁴^•¹

Release and box office

The film opened in China on 20 July 2023 with a first day of 49 million yuan, then reversed its schedule share as word of mouth spread, passing 600 million yuan by day seven and 2 billion yuan by 13 August, becoming the 32nd film in Chinese history to cross 2 billion.¹⁵^•¹⁶ It ended its run with a mainland total of 2.634 billion yuan and 60.68 million admissions, the 2023 champion among action films by both measures.² Box Office Mojo records $373,044,244 worldwide, of which $370,474,787 came from China.⁵

Overseas, Well Go USA released the film in the United States on 22 September 2023, where it grossed $1,706,355.⁴ By January 2025 it had been released in more than 160 countries and regions, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland.⁶

Reception and awards

Audience scores in China were high: 9.2 on the 1905.com database and 7.8 on Douban.¹^•³ Among English-language critics the response was mixed: Rotten Tomatoes recorded 60 percent on the Tomatometer from 10 reviews against a 97 percent audience score, with The Guardian praising the film's idiosyncrasies and the South China Morning Post giving four stars for its production design and action.¹⁷

The film won Best Feature Film, Best Cinematography for Wang Yu, and Best Supporting Actor for Li Xuejian at the 36th Golden Rooster Awards in 2023, and Li Xuejian won Best Supporting Actor again at the 37th Hundred Flowers Awards in 2024. It was named Most Popular Film at the 31st Beijing College Student Film Festival and received the Huabiao Award for Outstanding Feature Film at the 20th Huabiao Awards in 2025.¹^•¹⁸

Significance for Chinese film production

Wuershan has framed the trilogy as a step in the industrialization of Chinese filmmaking, arguing that the scale, duration, and difficulty of the back-to-back shoot were unprecedented for Chinese-language cinema and demonstrated that Chinese production teams could work at an international level.⁶^•¹⁹ The production filled in departments and procedures missing from the domestic industry, and the producers said they hoped the more than 8,000 crew members who passed through the production would carry its working methods into later projects.¹⁴^•²⁰ The sequel, Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force (封神第二部：战火西岐), was scheduled for the 2025 Chinese New Year holiday.²¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026