The Lost Empire (2001) 齐天大圣
Director: Peter McDonald
Screenwriter: David Henry Hwang
Starring: Thomas Gibson / Bai Ling / Wang Shengde / Rick Young / Caber Bady / Eddie Marsan, Randall Duke King / Guo Bute / Yu Beng Lim / Inde Ba / Li Yanhui / Henry Au / Lin Jixiu / James Faulkner / Weng Shijie / Kwong Locke / Jiang Jinrong / Liang Rongrong / Tang Hanping / Picasso Tan / Lin Bisheng / Jacqueline Chen / Terrence Beasley / Sun Jia / Gregory Teo / Ian Zong / Annette Brandt / Olga Sosnovska / Ng Yiu Han / Jeremy Chang / Stephen Leung
Genre: Romance / Fantasy
Country/Region of Manufacture: USA / Germany / Czech Republic
Language: English
Premiere: 2001-03-11 (USA)
Episodes: 2
Single episode length: 82 minutes
Also known as: 失落的帝国 / 猴王 / The Monkey King
IMDb: tt0198779
Adaptation: Crossover
Summary:
American journalist Nick Orton is caught up in the world of Chinese gods and monsters while on a search for the long lost manuscript to ‘Hsi Yu Chi’ (The Journey to the West) by Wu Ch'eng En. He is accompanied on his journey by a humanoid ape with incredible strength and magical powers, a humanoid pig-man, and his brother-in-arms, an ex-cannibal. Based on one of the greatest stories in Chinese history.
Nicholas Orton (played by Thomas Gibson) is an American businessman who has lived in China for several years. He has a chance encounter with a beautiful Chinese lady (played by Bai Ling) who says that he is the only one who can save the world from reverting five-hundred years. He is unswayed by this until many modern buildings begin disappearing before his eyes. This mystical lady (revealed later as Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion) transports him to a portal which offers entrance, through the teachings of Confucius (played by Ric Young), to the ancient Chinese underworld.
When Orton (soon to be named The Scholar From Above) reaches the other side of the portal, he finds that his studies of Confucius will come in handy for the path that lies ahead. Orton’s first action is to rescue Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, from the mountain in which he has been imprisoned for centuries. Wukong travels with Orton in his quest to save the original manuscript of Journey to the West from retroactive destruction; if the story itself is erased from history, all of the people who were ever inspired by the lessons it teaches will be worse off, and history will permanently change for the poorer. They are later joined by Zhu Bajie (Pigsy) and Sha Wujing (Friar Sand) to help them on their way.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey_King_(miniseries)
