Almost three years ago, a strange press conference took place in Beijing. On a stage bathed in flashing lights, women with low-body fat danced around on a stage, their dresses billowing. They wore strange, striped rubber appliances on their heads which looked a bit like shower caps. The guest of honour at the press conference was Olga Kurylenko, the actress who’d appeared in the Bond film Quantum Of Solace not long earlier.

The press conference was to promote the impending release of Empires Of The Deep – a $130 million special effects extravaganza which would mark China’s triumphant entry into blockbuster filmmaking. Bankrolled by one Jon Jiang, a real estate magnate with very deep pockets, the film was billed as a Grecian fantasy movie under the sea, with comely mermaids (hence the rubber shower caps), warriors astride giant crabs, and huge fish operated like submarines. It was to be an eastern Avatar – a 3D behemoth that would make a splash in all corners of the world.

A year before that press conference, in 2009, the makers of Empires Of The Deep began to put out casting calls for western bit-part actors to appear in their movie. Production would last for four months (between 20th November of that year and March 19th 2010), and filming would take place in Zhouzhou (Hebei Province) and Beijing. The number of extras required was oddly small (just 10 males and 15 females), and the pay relatively low (the equivalent of around £790 per month in UK money), but flights and accommodation were all paid for, and hey – you got to appear in a landmark blockbuster movie.

With production apparently moving smoothly ahead, The New York Times were invited over to Beijing in June 2010 – by which point, the film should have been in post-production. It became clear, though, that things hadn’t gone entirely according to plan. Empires Of The Deep (working title: Mermaid Island USA Vs The Plesiosaurs) was originally intended to cost a relatively sensible $50 million, before the cost soared.