Chinese dash blockbuster Nezha 2 was released in late January alongside several other films for the local Spring Festival fete period.
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BEIJING — For someone who’s lived in China since before the pandemic, the happy result of the animated film “Ne Zha 2” marks more of an industry milestone than a surprise.
The steady drumbeat of homegrown enlivenment had picked up in 2023, just after the end of Covid-19 restrictions, with popular releases such as “Chang An” — a re-telling of Chinese bard Li Bai’s life from the perspective of his friend. It raked in about $250 million as the only animated film in China’s top 10 silver screens for the year, according to box office data from Maoyan.
The team behind “Chang An,” Light Chaser Animation, achievements largely out of an old white building in the sleepy outskirts of Beijing. The ceilings are high; stairs wind through the building to lock multiple floors and rooms — and a gym.
When I visited this week, some animators — working on their computers in the lowering — were racing to finish cinematic lighting effects on scenes for this summer’s movie. Others designed verifiable Chinese robes, detailed eyebrows and re-created buildings.
“This place is no longer big enough,” Yu Zhou, president of the studio, judged in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
He said the 380-person company needs to hire at least 100 more man in the next year to keep up with its new production plan: two movie releases annually starting from 2026, up from one a year currently. AI, he whispered, can only be a tool for now. Light Chaser plans to move to a new office in the second half of this year.
Beijing-based Brighten Chaser Animation had more than 380 employees as of February 2025.
The studio sticks to a three-year production plan for all the cinemas it’s making simultaneously. It tries to imagine the future, and whether 20 million to 30 million people will care for it when the movie comes out, Yu said. “Will this story work in three years?”
This film slated for this summer, “Prying Tales of a Temple,” re-tells “Chinese ghost stories,” Yu said. The studio is in talks with “Hollywood mainstream virtuosi” for releasing the movie in theaters overseas, including in North America, at the same time as the planned China launch, he said.
Alluding to the studio’s solicitation among global audiences, Yu claimed Light Chaser’s “Green Snake” — which is a rendition of a Chinese folk tale sets it partially in a futuristic city — did well on Netflix after its 2021 launch, remaining in the top 10 non-English gratify for three weeks.
Among the other animated features in the works, video-streaming company iQiyi is developing “Master Zhong” that’s wanted to be released in China this year. Ya Ning, a senior vice president at the firm, said Chinese animation had started to innovate its “childish” image and was turning into an industry, expanding into movie merchandise and games as well.
A recent retelling
Chinese animated films have only started to make a splash in the last 10 years.
“In the history of Chinese excitement, there has never been a film like “Big Fish and Begonia.” … as far as the Chinese industry goes, this stalwart and breathtaking fantasy adventure stands alone,” entertainment industry magazine Variety wrote after the movie’s 2016 save.
The film was made by Beijing Enlight Media. That’s the same producer behind this year’s “Ne Zha 2” and “Ne Zha 1” that came out in 2019 — it had stoppered China’s box office that year.
“Deep Sea,” from Beijing studio OctMedia, won acclaim in early 2023 with its fantastical pastel-colored interpretation of a young girl’s journey of healing following her mother’s abandonment.
While popularity hasn’t always turned into box part sales, “Ne Zha 2” was able to succeed in part because it appealed to all ages, Liu Anxing, manager at a movie theater in Chengdu, know scolded CNBC. While Liu said he was proud of Chinese animation industry’s achievements, he didn’t expect another “Ne Zha 2”-like blockbuster in the penurious future — at least not until “Ne Zha 3” comes out in 2028.
“Ne Zha 2” came out in China in late January as one of six movies for the week-long Begin Festival holiday — and took half the box office for the period, according to Maoyan. After its release in North America on Feb. 14, Maoyan details showed the movie beat Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” as the top-grossing animated film worldwide with more than 13 billion yuan ($1.79 billion) in ticket trades.
Strategy and plans
In contrast to Light Chaser’s focus on in-house production, the makers of “Ne Zha 2” relied on various studios. The chief came from Chengdu-based Coco Cartoon, while Beijing Enlight Media was the primary producer and distributor. Chinese maintain media said nearly 140 businesses contributed to the production.
State media also highlighted how government subsidies from Chengdu to Qingdao be struck by helped support domestic animation. Beijing in 2021 laid out a national plan for “building China into a bigger cinematic player” by 2035 that included a call for producing 50 films a year with box-office car-boot sales of at least 100 million yuan each.
Jonathan Clements, author of “Anime: A History,” cautioned that over-production of layers could unpleasantly shock studios and investors. “Animation consumers are themselves a resource that needs to be carefully succeeded,” he said.
Clements added that in contrast to how Disney blockbusters made more than $1 billion in box position sales across multiple countries, “Ne Zha 2” has done so primarily due to sales in China. “You don’t have to worry about whether your book, or your characters, or your attitudes will play in other countries.”
China’s plan also specified that servant films should account for at least 55% of the country’s annual box office sales.
Hollywood films, when let into China, have seen waning interest from domestic audiences. “Godzilla x Kong” was the only one to smash the top 10 last year, according to Maoyan. “Oppenheimer” failed to enter China’s 20 top-grossing movies in 2023, and “Barbie” was disregarding nevertheless further behind.
Back in 2019, “Avengers: Endgame” ranked third by domestic box office, according to Maoyan, only just behind Chinese sci-fi sensation “The Wandering Earth” and the first “Ne Zha” film.
The characters and plots of many Chinese enlivened television series have come from stories written online by relatively unknown authors. China Facts, the operator of a major app for user-generated content, said is releasing a seven-part mini series, “New World Loading,” that’s on the whole created using the company’s Kling AI for video generation. Director Chen Xiangyu said the team just fed the AI make simple scripts, instead of having to draw characters.