Legend of the Demon Cat (read our review), the latest feature from internationally celebrated filmmaker and Palme d’Or winner Chen Kaige, will receive a U.S. theatrical release from myCinema, timed to coincide with Chinese New Year, February 5, 2019.

The sweeping historical drama, based on the novel Gensoshin Kukai, by best-selling Japanese fantasy writer Baku Yumemakura, and filled with legendary Chinese characters, is a visual feast, and will be released in theaters nationwide, including Los Angeles and New York.

Interestingly, the Sino-Japanese co-production, featuring an ensemble cast of top talent from mainland China and Japan, was filmed on a lavish, sprawling set, which included the creation of an entire city, that took over five years and in excess of $250 million to construct (read more about it here). “I have yet to feel at ease making an entire movie using just a green screen,” said Kaige.

Legend of Demon Cat is set over a thousand years ago, during the imperial Tang Dynasty, considered by scholars to be a cosmopolitan period of exceptional cultural and literary flowering. A Chinese poet, Bai Letian (Xuan Huang) and a Japanese monk, Kukai (Shōta Sometani) join forces to investigate the case of a demonic cat who has possessed a general’s wife (Kitty Zhang Yuqi) and wreaked havoc on the imperial court. The investigation takes some gruesome and unexpected twists, leading the monk and the poet to unravel the mystery behind the decades-old death of the legendary, beautiful concubine Yang Guifei (Sandrine Pinna), one of the iconic Four Beauties of ancient China.