How to Watch "The Wandering Earth" In Australia

One of the year’s biggest blockbusters just surprise-dropped on Netflix.

If you take a look at the highest grossing films of 2019, once you scroll past all the billion-dollar-earning Disney movies, and before you get to How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, you might notice an unfamiliar title.

That’d be The Wandering Earth, a movie that somehow managed to earn almost $US700 million globally without making much of a racket down under.

Have we piqued your curiosity? Well, you’ll be glad to know that you can finally see what all the fuss is about for yourself, because Netflix surprise-dropped The Wandering Earth in Australia on Monday 5 August.

The Wandering Earth is a Chinese sci-fi flick about astronauts trying to guide our planet away from an expanding sun without also colliding with Jupiter (incredible premise, btw). When it debuted in mainland China back in February, it became their second-highest grossing film of all time, even topping Avengers: Endgame (which is currently sitting in third position overall). That’s where it made the grand majority of its money. It only collected $US5.8 million in America; in Australia, it earned a bit more than $AUD1 million, where, clearly, it didn’t get the same wide expansion as, say, The Lion King or Captain Marvel.

But that doesn’t matter now! Several months after the film was stealthily dropped onto American Netflix, it’s now available for Aussie subscribers. So, if you want to see the movie that Chinese cinemagoers preferred to Avengers: Endgame, and that made double the money of Shazam worldwide, here’s your chance.