BEIJING — A Chinese animated film about a mythical child with a punk attitude and superpowers has become China’s highest-grossing movie of all time, stoking national pride and potentially setting more records as it premieres overseas.
“Ne Zha 2” has earned almost almost $1.3 billion in the two weeks since it was released in mainland China, according to the Chinese ticketing platform Maoyan. In addition to being the most successful film in Chinese box office history, it is the first non-Hollywood film to earn more than $1 billion and the first film in the world to earn more than $1 billion in a single market.
The movie is set for a limited release in the United States starting Friday.
Inspired by a famous Chinese legend, “Ne Zha 2” tells the story of a child deity named Ne Zha who rebels against his destiny and uses magical powers to protect his community from formidable enemies. It’s the sequel to a hit movie released in 2019 that became the highest-grossing Chinese animated film at the time.
Chinese moviegoers have showered the new film with praise, taking pride in the fact that it is entirely Chinese-made, from the director to the special effects and postproduction teams.
“It’s a purely Chinese animated film, deeply rooted in Chinese cultural heritage,” said Nianyi Zhao, 29, an independent film critic in China. “Regardless of how the story is structured, Chinese audiences are willing to support it as a way of promoting domestic animation and sharing Chinese culture with the world.”
Its success has been hailed as a sign of China’s advances in filmmaking and the declining influence of Hollywood in China amid a growing cultural and national identity.
“The film masterfully blends traditional Eastern aesthetics — such as Dunhuang murals and ink painting — with modern animation technology,” said Neo Liu, a 31-year-old illustration designer from Beijing. “It was an impressive visual experience.”
Jiaozi, also known as Yang Yu, who directed and wrote both “Ne Zha” films, told Chinese state-run broadcaster CCTV that he had tried to outsource key visual work to top overseas studios, but the results fell short due to “arrogance and prejudice.”
“Ne Zha 2” — whose Jan. 29 release coincided with the Lunar New Year holiday, a major moviegoing period — has brought a glimmer of hope to China’s languishing film market, whose total box office last year was 34% lower than its pre-Covid peak in 2019, according to data from the China Film Administration.
The film helped the Chinese box office, the second-largest in the world after North America, take in a record 9.5 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) during the eight-day Lunar New Year holiday, according to Maoyan, in a bright spot for Chinese officials struggling to boost consumer spending amid an economic slump.
“Ne Zha 2” quickly eclipsed China’s previous highest-grossing film, 2021’s “The Battle of Lake Changjin,” a Korean War drama typical of the patriotic epics that have dominated the Chinese box office in recent years.
It could also be on course to surpass last year’s “Inside Out 2” as the highest-grossing animated film of all time.
Chinese state media have touted “Ne Zha 2” as the latest in a series of Chinese cultural successes including last year’s hit video game Black Myth: Wukong, the recent rush of American TikTok users to the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, and the market-moving rise of Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek.
“The reason these products from different fields have been able to break through visible or invisible barriers and create an international buzz lies in the strong demand for exchanges in trade, culture, and public opinion between China and the world,” the state-backed nationalist tabloid Global Times said in an editorial on Wednesday.
Asked Wednesday about the success of “Ne Zha 2,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Chinese films “are building new bridges for communication between China and other countries, and opening up a new window for the world to understand China.”
The film has also connected with Chinese audiences who see the character of Ne Zha as an anti-hero whose “fighting spirit” against authority and hierarchy serves as a counterpoint to the popular concept of “lying flat,” or doing the bare minimum to get by in life while rejecting the relentless economic pressure of Chinese society.
“This movie is so inspiring,” read one comment on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. “We young people are very easily defeated in life but maybe we should live passionately, just like Ne Zha.”
The fanfare continues to build, with movie merchandise flying off the shelves and the film projected to earn nearly $2 billion in China alone.
On Weibo, a hashtag called #NeZhaBoxOfficeRaisingNationalFlag is quickly gaining traction with billions of views, and many young people have said they are willing to pay to watch the movie multiple times to help boost its ranking.
Not everyone is so effusive about the film.
“Compared to other movies from the same period, I guess I like it —but mostly because the local Chinese films in recent years have been pretty underwhelming,” said Ginger Zhang, a 29-year-old in Beijing.
Vanessa Huang, a 31-year-old working in law, said she liked the movie and planned to watch it again, but it was not without flaws.
“Ne Zha in the original story has a strong anti-patriarchal theme, which wasn’t really reflected in the film,” she said. “But overall, it’s still a solid work.”
