How a Chinese animated movie reaped $2.4 billion and beat Hollywood giants
Animated hit Ne Zha 2 offers its Chinese audience a Marvel-like hero in dark times.
A Chinese movie about a boy who fights demons and gods has become the world’s highest grossing movie in any single market.
With $US1.2bn ($2.4bn) in box-office revenue in the two weeks from its January 29 release, Ne Zha 2 has outpaced American films that used to be a staple of the Chinese entertainment scene.
It beat the record held by the 2015 Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, which reaped $US936.7m in North America.
The animated film’s record-breaking early run marks a moment of national pride in China’s culture and technology as audiences gravitate towards movies made at home. The movie’s success follows DeepSeek’s sudden elevation to fame with a Chinese artificial intelligence model that rivals US ones. The buzz about DeepSeek and Ne Zha 2 is a timely confidence boost as Chinese officials and consumers face prolonged economic gloom and a trade war with the US under the Trump administration.
Directed by Yang Yu, the film is loosely based on Investiture of the Gods, a classic of Chinese mythology published more than 400 years ago. Investiture of the Gods has proven to be lucrative source material for a country eager to see its own stories on screen.
The movie’s folkloric roots have turned the ancient text into a kind of Marvel superheroes universe of storytelling for Chinese filmmakers who want to offer epic storylines while hewing to narratives that will be allowed by Communist Party censors.
No other Chinese movie has approached the success of Ne Zha 2. The film, released during the Lunar New Year holiday, speaks to many Chinese who need something to lift their spirits amid slowing economic growth and rising international tension, says Karen Ma, author of China’s Millennial Digital Generation, which profiles young Chinese directors.
Yang, in his mid-40s, was an unknown director with a good idea who stuck to it for years and pulled it off, Ma says. Makers of Chinese animated films “have arrived at a moment when they can proudly say that ‘we can rival Hollywood now’, especially in special effects”.
A sequel to Ne Zha, which topped the country’s box-office charts in 2019, the movie has captivated an even wider audience in China in 2025. A theatre in Shanghai early this month was packed as an emotional crowd reacted to the nearly 2½-hour long movie with laughter and tears.
Ni Mingyue, an art teacher in Shanghai, says her eight-year-old daughter was engrossed. Apart from the stunning visual effects, such as those illustrating the heavenly palaces where the gods reside, Ni says she was most impressed by the plot’s twists and turns.
“For many American blockbusters, I can pretty much guess what’s going to happen, but this movie surprised me so much, which is very satisfying,” says Ni.
Jiang Jie, a college student in Guangdong, says she missed part of the movie during a bathroom break the first time she watched it so went back to see it again – then a third time. “The special effects are so cool that they are bursting from the big screens,” Jiang says.
Ahead of its North America official opening on February 14, the Chinese embassy in Washington posted videos of the movie’s trailer being shown in Times Square on its Facebook and TikTok accounts.
Li Zhiqiang, China’s deputy consul general in Los Angeles, hailed the film’s strong performance in China and its potential global appeal. Li called for closer collaboration between China and the US in the film industry.
Chinese state media has said Ne Zha and the Legend of Deification, another movie based on the classic Investiture of the Gods, have taken cues from the Marvel universe. The Ne Zha animations reflect the influence of Pixar and DreamWorks – not just the animation style but the sense of humour, says Doris Sutherland, a cultural writer and commentator based in Britain.
Taiyi Zhenren, the mentor to the main character, Ne Zha, who is traditionally depicted as a divine sage, is made to be a fat, goofy guy who farts and vomits. “You can imagine him hanging out with Shrek,” Sutherland says.
The success of Ne Zha 2 is in many ways the culmination of a long campaign by officials to develop a homegrown culture industry. Starting in the 1990s, China began importing Hollywood movies and watched as the imports drew larger crowds than the work of domestic filmmakers.
Hollywood producers were happy to see it. As the US film industry’s domestic grosses flatlined, China offered a welcome market, quickly growing to No. 2 in the world. For the animation industry, the country also offered millions of children to rear on hit movies. Disney routinely saw hundreds of millions of dollars in box-office grosses that in turn helped boost attendance at its theme park in Shanghai.
The success of DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda in 2008 spurred conversations among CCP officials about how their own country could draw on Chinese culture and produce similar animated films that resonated around the world.
The Chinese government encouraged producers and screenwriters to study the work of Hollywood. Starting around 2016, Chinese movies started to outgross the American competition regularly, a trend that accelerated as the countries grew apart during Donald Trump’s first administration.
China’s movies – made by people who grew up with the stories and value them – managed to avoid the gaffes one might expect from a Hollywood treatment of Chinese legends, such as when Disney gave Mulan a fire-breathing dragon as a companion – even though Chinese dragons are associated with water, Sutherland says.
These new versions retell old legends in fresh and exciting ways, more appealing to younger audiences and reflecting the cultural pride shared by Chinese and the millions in the Chinese diaspora worldwide, says Universitas Indonesia lecturer Adi Wulandari.
Despite its popularity in China, Ne Zha 2 won’t be showing in many theatres outside the large cities in the US. It remains to be seen if American audiences can relate to the storyline, unlike the household names of the Marvel heroes.
Out of the more than $US700m the original Ne Zha grossed in 2019 worldwide, only a fraction, some $US3.7m, was attributable to moviegoers in North America.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Zhao Yueling contributed to this article
Ne Zha 2 is in Australian cinemas
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