Beach House Pictures’ Rob Sixsmith and representatives from China Media Group (CMG) take ScreenMDM inside the making of Secret Weapons of China’s First Emperor, which premiered on CCTV9 in China yesterday (Monday) and is being rolled out internationally by Fremantle.
The one-hour special, also set to air on SBS in Australia, is produced by Beach House Pictures and CMG. Donovan Chan and Sixsmith EP for Beach House Pictures, which is part of the Fremantle family, and Han Wein and Tian Yuan EP for CMG. It takes audiences inside the military might behind China’s first empire and provides a fuller understanding of Qin Shi Huang beyond the most famous discovery associated with the ancient Chinese ruler: the Terracotta Warriors.
The story of the doc starts at CMG, which reached out to Beach House Pictures in 2023 to begin planning for major historical milestones: the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Terracotta Army and the 30th anniversary of the official excavation of Pit 2, one part of the emperor’s massive burial site.
“To mark these milestones, CCTV9 (CMG) wanted to create a landmark documentary, one that would not only reflect on the extraordinary findings accumulated over five decades but bring fresh academic and historical perspectives to both Chinese and international audiences,” the CMG EP tells ScreenMDM. “Those dual ambitions made Beach House Pictures the ideal partner.”
Beach House has a team in China, which called the Singapore office with “a crazy level of excitement,” Sixsmith, head of factual at Beach House, tells ScreenMDM. “That team has this extraordinary ability to unlock access to stories that most filmmakers can’t get near. When they said there might be a route into the Terracotta Warriors, we didn’t wait around. We assembled the best team, called the experts we trusted, and started digging. The driving ambition from day one was to find something new, not to retread familiar ground. And through patient, careful relationship-building with the Chinese archaeological experts, the world began to open up. One that had been waiting in the clay for over 2,000 years.”
Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum is the largest imperial burial site in China, “and one that has been the subject of continuous archaeological and academic study for decades,” the CMG team says. “Its historical and cultural significance is without equal, and precisely because of that, access for filming is extraordinarily restricted. Capturing active excavation work and behind-the-scenes conservation on camera is, under normal circumstances, simply not possible.”
CMG was able to deliver that access, but it took a while to pull the pieces together. There was a full year of preparation, the Chinese media group says. “We secured permits and coordinated access to film archaeologists at work in both Pit 1 and Pit 2, as well as exclusive behind-the-scenes access to restoration studios at Pit 1, Pit 2, and the remarkable acrobat figure uncovered at the Acrobat Pit near the mausoleum. We also gained rare access to film a collection of bamboo slips more than 2,200 years old at the Hunan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, a location approximately 1,000 kilometers from the main site, spanning two provinces.”
Reflecting on that experience, Sixsmith said, “It really is a surprisingly vibrant archive. And these slips in some ways give words to the incomprehensible engineering of the silent Terracotta Warriors. How did they achieve such a feat over 2,000 years ago? You can almost see the roadmap in these slips that show a fastidious attempt to unite and make uniform this vast, nascent empire.”
Sixsmith says the mausoleum “is unlike anywhere else on Earth. It operates simultaneously as one of China’s great tourist destinations and as an almost forensic, archaeological site—treated, in many ways, like a crime scene. Getting down into the pits with the figures is a genuinely humbling experience, and one that very few people ever get. What opened the door was the archaeologists themselves. They are passionate advocates for modern technology, be it scanning, digital documentation, or cutting-edge analysis. And that enthusiasm gave our footage an unexpectedly contemporary feel against such an ancient backdrop. It also gave us permission to go further because we sensed that AI could serve history better than almost any other genre. It quickly and efficiently allows an audience to time-travel. Given that China’s first emperor and the Qin Dynasty represent such a seismic moment in the story of human civilization, we felt a real duty to use every tool available to bring that era to life.”
The team also assembled a lineup of local and international experts. “Ancient history of this period attracts exceptional scholars, and we were fortunate to have both outstanding Chinese experts and a small group of world-class English-language historians to draw on,” Sixsmith says. “We knew from the outset that people like Professor Jessica Rawson had to be part of it. We wanted those rare contributors who combine absolute authority with genuine television charisma. Historians should keep you on your toes—and that energy translates directly to the screen.”
“What struck us most was the unexpected chemistry between the international scholars and their Chinese counterparts,” the CMG representative says. “They had not met or corresponded before filming, yet their thinking aligned, diverged, and enriched one another in ways that created genuine intellectual sparks on screen. The interplay of perspectives, Chinese and international, archaeological and historical, institutional and independent, produced insights that felt genuinely new, and that we believe will be as surprising and stimulating for Chinese audiences as for viewers anywhere in the world.”
With Fremantle leading international sales, it was important to produce a film that would speak authentically to local audiences while also resonating globally.
“CMG has a long and extensive track record producing documentaries on Chinese history and archaeology for domestic audiences,” the CMG EP says. “But we are equally committed to sharing that history with the wider world—and to doing so in a way that genuinely resonates internationally. That means being open to creative partnerships with talented overseas producers and directors, whether through co-funding, co-development, or full co-production. Collaboration of this kind is genuinely enriching. It brings new creative perspectives, fresh editorial instincts, and a sharper understanding of what international audiences want from a documentary about China. Working closely with an overseas team also helps ensure that the storytelling connects with the rhythms and expectations of viewers beyond China—and opens doors to a broader range of international broadcasters.”
A key challenge, Sixsmith says, was overcoming the fact that “Chinese viewers have grown up with the Terracotta Warriors. They know the story. So, the pressure to find something new was genuine. Rather luckily, something new ended up finding us. Significant discoveries were made while we were filming. That is very rare in archaeology. And when one of those discoveries turned out to be perhaps the first ballista-type weapon found in ancient China, in other words, a childhood dream of a mega-weapon, it gave us an editorial spine that could carry both audiences at once. A story about the Qin Dynasty’s technical genius that connected the ancient world to modern China, and that gave us universal themes to follow all the way to the present day.”
For CMG, it was particularly significant that the doc goes beyond surface-level insights into the scale of the Qin empire. “Beneath it lies something far more compelling: the question of how the Qin state motivated and mobilized its people, how it drove innovation, how it managed vast resources, and how it translated technological mastery into enduring power. After decades of excavation and research, we felt the 50th anniversary offered the right moment to look beyond the spectacle and explore those deeper questions. We hope that the technological story gives audiences today a new lens through which to understand Qin culture—and the remarkable civilization that produced it more than 2,200 years ago.”
I asked Sixsmith and the CMG team about what their major revelations were during the production process. For Sixsmith, there was, of course, the awe-inspiring nature of the archaeological finds themselves. Still, the biggest discovery, he says, “was seeing that the love in China for the Terracotta Warriors has not dimmed at all. The awe in those halls is real, and it is undimmed. And perhaps that is because the warriors keep earning it by constantly revealing new finds, constantly nudging our understanding of this extraordinary period forward.”
The CMG EP said that just condensing “the story of the Terracotta Warriors and the Qin Dynasty into a single hour-long film—one that speaks equally to Chinese and international audiences,” is a wonder to itself. “And like the best academic inquiry, the process of making it turned out to be a two-way education.”
