''Viy 3D'' (russian: Вий, internationally known as ''Forbidden Empire'', and in the UK as ''Forbidden Kingdom'') is a 2014 fantasy film produced by Russian and Ukraine Film Group and Marins Group Entertainment and loosely based on the Nikolai Gogol story of the same name. The film was released in cinemas in Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan on 30 January 2014, in the United States on 22 May 2015 and in the United Kingdom on 1 June 2015. The film is directed by Oleg Stepchenko, based on the first manuscript of Nikolai Gogol. The film has been in production since December 2005 and stopped several times due to lack of funding. In October 2012, the filming was completed. ''Viy'' was a huge commercial success, even breaking a record for opening weekend in Russia, but was met with mixed reviews.История создания. Часть 1 Вий 3D
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Premise

Early-18th-century cartographer Jonathan Green undertakes a scientific voyage from Western Europe to the East. Having passed through

Transylvania Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...

and crossed the Carpathian Mountains, he finds himself in a small village lost in impassable woods of

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

. The villagers share a naive belief that they could save themselves from evil, failing to understand that an evil curse has already made its way into their town.

Cast

Jason Flemyng Jason Iain Flemyng''Births, Marriages & Deaths Index of England & Wales, 1916–2005.''; at ancestry.com (born 25 September 1966) is an English actor. He is known for roles in British films such as ''Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'' (1998) ...

as Jonathan Green * Aleksey Chadov as Petrus * Anna Churina as Miss Dudley *

Charles Dance Walter Charles Dance (born 10 October 1946) is an English actor. He is known for playing strict, authoritarian characters and villains. His most notable film roles include Sardo Numspa in '' The Golden Child'' (1986), Dr. Jonathan Clemens in '' ...

as Lord Dudley * Agnia Ditkovskite as Nastusya * Anatoli Gushchin as Gorobets *

Igor Jijikine Igor Vitalievich Jijikine (Russian: И́горь Вита́льевич Жижи́кин; born 8 October 1965) is a Russian-American actor working in Los Angeles and Moscow. Early life and career Jijikine was born in Moscow and from 1983 to 1 ...

as Dorosh * Aleksandr Karpov as Panas * Ivan Mokhovikov as Khalyava * Aleksey Ogurtsov as Spirid * Alexey A. Petrukhin as Khoma *

Nina Ruslanova Nina Ivanovna Ruslanova (russian: Нина Ивановна Русланова; 5 December 1945 – 21 November 2021) was a Soviet and Russian theater and film actress. She was honored as a People's Artist of Russia (1998).Andrey Smolyakov Andrey Igorevich Smolyakov (russian: Андре́й И́горевич Смоляко́в; born 24 November 1958) is a Soviet and Russian actor and director. He is known for '' Vysotskiy. Spasibo, chto zhivoy'' (2011), '' Stalingrad'', and '' For ...

as Paisiy *

Oleg Taktarov Oleg Nikolaevich Taktarov (russian: Оле́г Никола́евич Такта́ров; born 26 August 1967) is a Russian actor and retired mixed martial artist. He was a practitioner of Sambo and Judo and competed in the Ultimate Fighting Cham ...

as Gritsko * Yuriy Tsurilo as Sotnik * Aleksandr Yakovlev as Kosoglazyy Kazak * Olga Zaytseva as Pannochka * Valeriy Zolotukhin as Yavtukh * Emma Černá as Babka Ganna

Production

In 2006, Russian producer Alexey Petrukhin and Russian director Oleg Stepchenko decided that they wanted to make a film based on the horror story of ''Viy'' by Nikolai Gogol. By then, two other projects based on Gogol's tale were in production, such as ''

Taras Bulba ''Taras Bulba'' (russian: «Тарас Бульба»; ) is a romanticized historical novella set in the first half of the 17th century, written by Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852). It features elderly Zaporozhian Cossack Taras Bulba and his sons And ...

'' film from 2009 and ''The Witch'' from 2006. In order to secure the title, they needed without any further delay to release the information on the forthcoming project. In the course of three days, they filmed a teaser trailer where the role of Khoma Brutus was played by Petrukhin himself. Only after that did the active production of the film begin. When the teaser was shown in theaters, the script was not yet written and the actors were not cast. The story kept growing and changing until it turned from a simple screen version into a big-budget fantasy thriller. The authors understood that the new times set new rules, so in 2011 they made a difficult but very important decision: they decided re-shoot the picture in 3D, even though half of the footage was already filmed. Conversion was out of the question. The decision to re-shoot was not just a PR trick. The re-shooting was taken seriously—the producers developed an innovative technology that had no parallels in the world. ''Viy'' is an intersection of two storylines. One is the narrative from Nikolai Gogol's horror story. The writers used the first edition of the story still untouched by Belinskiy's proofs. The original version has quite different motifs and the whole narrative focuses on a different kind of drama. What's more important, this version abounds in secrets and riddles. Thus, Gogol's immortal story will be screened without cuts. The second storyline is centered on a real person—

Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan Guillaume Levasseur de Beauplan (c. 1600 – 6 December 1673) or William le Vasseur de Beauplan was a French-Polish cartographer, engineer and architect. Beauplan served as artillery captain for the army of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland b ...

(1595–1685)—a French traveler and cartographer who was the first to study the Ukrainian territories and their people and culture. His research is included in the book ''From Transylvania to Muscovy''. The producers chose his figure because he was also the first to collect and systematize under one cover Slavic myths and legends. De Beauplan was a prototype of the film's main character—Jonathan Green.История создания. Часть 1 Вий 3D
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Filming locations

The castle in England where Green sets out on his journey is doubled in the film by the Czech Sychrov Castle. Despite being a few hundred years old—it was built in 1693—it is the newest castle in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

. The legend goes that somewhere in the dungeons of the castle is hidden a treasure guarded by a "Black Lady", a woman dressed in a black gown of mourning. In order to make her figure even scarier, some storytellers began calling the lady of the castle "the Black Widow".

Special effects

The film is shot in real 3D. Stereoscopic design of the film was done by the German company Stereotec. The producer, Alexei Petrukhin, said that originally the film was supposed to be stereoscopic. The scenes that were filmed during the first shooting period (about 20 minutes) were filmed in 2D and postconverted to 3D (in particular, episodes of Pannochka's funeral in the church were filmed that way). In 2011 the production decided to cooperate with Stereotec for the rest of the movie, a worldwide-operating, Munich-based 3D company. The rest of the picture (the remaining 2 hours) was shot with special

3D rig 3-D, 3D, or 3d may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Relating to three-dimensionality * Three-dimensional space ** 3D computer graphics, computer graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data ** 3D film, a ...

s from Stereotec and Cameras from ARRI in native 3D.

Release

Theatrical

The announced release date was 12 March 2009 which was timed for the 200th anniversary of Nikolai Gogol, but it was postponed indefinitely since then. After they finished shooting the first film of the trilogy, the producers decided to postpone the premiere until the work on the second film, ''Viy 2'' («Вий-2. Проклятое место»), is complete.История создания. Часть 1 Вий 3D
/ref> In April 2012, according to the official website of the trilogy, a new estimated release date was set as 2013. On 15 May 2013, as part of the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

, RFG representatives has signed an agreement with

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...

, to take part in production as a distribution company. The film finally appeared in theaters on 30 January 2014.История создания. Часть 1 Вий 3D
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Home media

''Viy'' was released on VHS and DVD in June 2014.История создания. Часть 1 Вий 3D
/ref> The theatrical Blu-ray version of ''Viy'' dubbed to English was released in the United States in May 2015.История создания. Часть 1 Вий 3D
/ref>

Reception

Box office

The first weekend take was 605.2 million rubles (some $17+ million), which was an all-time record for a Russian movie at the time. It grossed in Russia.

Critical response

Reception of the film was mixed. According to Russian reviews aggregator Kritikanstvo, ''Viy'' holds an approval rating of 57%, based on 39 reviews. Yury Gladilshchikov in ''

The Moscow News ''The Moscow News'', which began publication in 1930, was Russia's oldest English-language newspaper. Many of its feature articles used to be translated from the Russian language ''Moskovskiye Novosti.'' History Soviet Union In 1930 ''The Mo ...

'' gave a positive review, although he noted that the film lacks a target audience, since it is too intellectual for mass production and too simple for an educated audience. He also unfavorably compared it with '' Sleepy Hollow'' by

Tim Burton Timothy Walter Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American filmmaker and animator. He is known for his gothic fantasy and horror films such as '' Beetlejuice'' (1988), '' Edward Scissorhands'' (1990), '' The Nightmare Before Christmas'' (1993 ...

Mir Fantastiki ''Mir Fantastiki'' (russian: Мир фантастики), officially abbreviated as ''MirF'', is a Russian monthly science fiction and fantasy magazine. The name also refers to the website run by the magazine, Mirf.ru. ''Mir Fantastiki'' litera ...

magazine was more positive about the movie and even named it the best Russian science fiction/fantasy movie of 2014.

Sequel

On 5 April 2015, a press conference was held in InterContinental Hotel in Moscow with producers Alexey Petrukhin and Sergei Selyanov. Actors

and Anna Churina reprise their roles, with

Rutger Hauer Rutger Oelsen Hauer (; 23 January 1944 – 19 July 2019) was a Dutch actor. In 1999, he was named by the Dutch public as the Best Dutch Actor of the Century. Hauer's career began in 1969 with the title role in the Dutch television series ' ...

and Helen Yao joining. During the conference, it was confirmed that the filming of the sequel, titled ''Viy 2: Journey to China'', has been started. The movie was partially shot in China and received help from the Jackie Chan Stunt Team, stunt coordinator He Jun, and operator Man-Ching Ng. The film debuted in China in August 2019.

References

External links

* * * * {{Authority control 2014 films 2010s fantasy adventure films Russian fantasy adventure films Films shot in Prague High fantasy films Russian epic films 2014 3D films 2014 horror films 2010s dark fantasy films 2010s English-language films English-language Czech films English-language German films English-language Russian films English-language Ukrainian films Films based on Russian folklore Films based on Viy (story) Films set in the 18th century Films set in Ukraine German 3D films 2010s Russian-language films Russian 3D films German fantasy adventure films Russian horror films 2010s supernatural horror films Ukrainian fantasy films Films about witchcraft Czech adventure films Films shot in the Czech Republic Czech horror films Czech fantasy films Films about Orthodoxy 2010s German films Czech dark fantasy films Russian dark fantasy films