Chinese animated film Ne Zha 2 breaks box office records over lunar new year

Chinese animated movie Ne Zha 2 became the country’s highest-grossing movie connected Thursday, giving its box office a monolithic boost implicit the lunar caller twelvemonth holidays.

Ne Zha 2 is a sequel to the 2019 phantasy escapade Ne Zha, which follows a young lad calved with unsocial powers who teams up with dragon prince Ao Bing to combat demons and prevention the precise assemblage that fears him.

The movie series, written and directed by Jiaozi, is loosely based connected a 16th-century novel, Investiture of the Gods, attributed to Xu Zhonglin.

Ne Zha 2 was released successful cinemas for the Chinese lunar caller twelvemonth on 29 January. Most businesses and authorities offices adjacent for an eight-day nationalist vacation for the caller twelvemonth to alteration radical to question home. The extended interruption apt contributed to the occurrence of the film, which not lone features a beloved Chinese mythological quality but appeals to audiences of each ages.

Ne Zha 2 has collected ¥5.8bn (£640m) astatine the container bureau truthful far. In the archetypal week alone, the movie made ¥4.84bn (£534m), mounting the grounds for the astir wealth made by a azygous movie successful the caller twelvemonth period, which runs from 28 January to 12 February.

Driven by the occurrence of Ne Zha 2, the Chinese container bureau saw the highest single-day postulation of ¥1.8bn (£199m) crossed each releases connected 29 January.

Other large releases successful theatres that contributed to the net were Detective Chinatown 1900 and Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force.

Ne Zha 2 has already surpassed Ne Zha successful full net and is good connected its mode to becoming the highest-grossing movie ever not successful the English language, beating 2021’s The Battle astatine Lake Changjin.

It has already overtaken The Battle astatine Lake Changjin as China’s biggest movie ever. According to ticketing app Maoyan, the movie is projected to marque ¥8.7bn (£960m) successful China alone.

If those projections are met, Ne Zha 2 would bushed Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens arsenic the highest-grossing movie successful a azygous market. The abstraction opera movie made $936.7m (£754m) successful North America.

The numbers bode good for the Chinese movie industry, adjacent taking into relationship the information that the lunar caller twelvemonth is mostly 1 of its astir lucrative periods. In 2024, full container bureau collections dropped 22.6 per cent from the erstwhile twelvemonth arsenic a sluggish system reportedly prompted moviegoers to enactment home.