[3] Viy was a huge commercial success, even breaking a record for opening weekend in Russia, but was met with mixed reviews.

[1] Early-18th-century cartographer Jonathan Green undertakes a scientific voyage from Western Europe to the East to map the entire world.

Having passed through Transylvania and crossed the Carpathian Mountains, he finds himself in a small village lost in impassable woods of Dnieper Ukraine.

However, the malevolent spirit of the girl seemingly kills him, after which the village priest Paisiy declared the town to be cursed and locked it from the outside world.

When Jonathan arrives in the village, the priest mistakes him for an envoy of the Devil due to his coded scientific writing.

As Jonathan is an atheist, Sotnik lures him to the cursed church under the pretense of wanting a map of the oblast.

Panas, who has witnessed the murder, fled for his life in Paisiy‘s disguise and has hid costumed in the cursed church for a year, being fed by a fearful Nastusya.

The story kept growing and changing until it turned from a simple screen version into a big-budget fantasy thriller.

[5][6] 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.

The second storyline is centered on a real person—Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan (1595–1685)—a French traveler and cartographer who was the first to study the Ukrainian territories and their people and culture.

In order to make her figure even scarier, some storytellers began calling the lady of the castle "the Black Widow".

The rest of the picture (the remaining 2 hours) was shot [12] with special 3D rigs from Stereotec and Cameras from ARRI in native 3D.

[13] 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.

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

Actors Jason Flemyng, Charles Dance and Anna Churina reprise their roles, with Rutger Hauer and Helen Yao joining.