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A new film is breaking box-office records in China
“Ne Zha 2” shows how the mood inside the country is changing
Mar 6th 2025 | 567 words | ★★★☆☆
Film-makers in China have long tried to find the secret sauce for movies that wow audiences while pleasing the authorities. The epics that evolved became known as
zhuxuanlu
, or “main melody” films, because they are in tune with the party line. But the heavy doses of patriotism that they usually involve have fallen out of favour. Instead, one Beijing studio has struck gold with a cartoon reimagining the tale of a “demon child” from a 16th-century novel.
The film, “Ne Zha 2”, is a sequel, in which the eponymous child battles monsters and immortals on a quest to save his friend and protect his family’s fortress. Launched over the Chinese New Year holiday, it has taken more than $2bn and become the most successful animated feature ever made anywhere. It has overtaken “Spider-Man: No Way Home” as the seventh-highest-grossing film ever. And it has done so by tapping deep into China’s cultural roots.
By the mid-2010s, film-makers were nailing the main melody of the patriotic blockbuster. Before “Ne Zha 2”, the two most popular films were “The Battle at Lake Changjin” from 2021 and “Wolf Warrior 2” from 2017. Both were action flicks involving the defeat of dastardly foreigners. Such films topped China’s charts from 2017 to 2023 (except 2019), according to data from Maoyan, a movie-ticketing service. The state invested in their rise. A law passed in 2016 to support the film industry listed “promoting core socialist values” as one key theme. But their popularity peaked in 2020, when they accounted for more than half of box-office receipts of the 20 highest-grossing films. This year, that share fell below 2%. Triumphant narratives of national strength seem detached from reality, with Chinese viewers now struggling in a depressed economy.
Enter the demon child. “Ne Zha 2” has perhaps caught on because it is not forcing anything on anyone. Chinese people know the character from folklore. The film is packed with humour delivered by endearing characters, and it resonates because of its messages of self-determination, the unconditional love of family and the pursuit of justice. The technical sophistication has amazed viewers and pitched domestic animation studios as serious competitors to their Hollywood counterparts.
At a cinema in the eastern city of Hangzhou Ms Zheng, a 20-year-old student, is watching the film with her friends. She says she found the hero epics too heavy—“They force-feed patriotism”—and has already seen “Ne Zha 2” three times. Like many young people disillusioned by the current paucity of job opportunities, Ms Zheng says she finds hope in the rebellious and righteous Ne Zha. “Nowadays we are overwhelmed by social pressure, but he tells you that you can define the type of person you want to be.”
To boost consumption during the holiday, local governments gave out cinema vouchers to attract more moviegoers. Once it was clear the film could break records, more people rallied to see it. Schools took students, and firms stopped production so employees could attend. One cinema in Sichuan province said that it would hold off screening the recently released “Captain America: Brave New World” in order to boost “Ne Zha 2” sales. “Our Chinese animation deserves to be seen by the world,” it said.
The world has not yet been won over, though. So far, less than 2% of ticket sales have come from abroad. That could be the next melody Chinese film-makers learn to play.
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——新英文外刊，每日精选优质外刊文章，文章高质、话题丰富、时效新鲜，始于2016年3月。
