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The Adventurers, a neglected 90s Hong Kong noir actioner and the only time Andy Lau worked with director Ringo Lam, is getting a US Blu-Ray.
Posted in: Movies | Tagged: animation, Beijing Enlight Pictures, box office, Chengdu Coco Cartoon Co., chinese film, CMC Pictures, Ne Zha 2
Ne zha 2 Breaks $1 Billion at the Chinese Box Office, Opening in US
Ne Zha 2 is the first animated feature film to break $1 billion at the box office in 2025 and will open in North America on February 14th.
Article Summary
- Ne Zha 2 surpasses $1 billion in China, becoming the highest-grossing animated film of 2025.
- The film combines epic slapstick with a storyline from the classic Chinese novel, Investiture of the Gods.
- The blockbuster opened during Chinese New Year, boosting struggling theaters post-COVID.
- Ne Zha 2 releases in North America on February 14th; viewers can watch the first movie on YouTube.
You may not know this unless you read the trades, but Ne zha 2, an animated feature film, is the first movie of 2025 to break one billion dollars at the box office after just one week and is now the highest-grossing Chinese film ever. And that's just in China. This makes it the most profitable animated film of this year. It made that amount in just China alone during the 8-day Chinese New Year holiday, the biggest box office season of the year in China. Ne zha 2, or Ne zha vs. The Sea Demons, is a sequel to the 2019 hit Nezha, about a pissed-off young god who teams up with a dragon prince to fight demons and protect the community that feared him.
Ne zha 2: Like Pixar Only With More Epic Slapstick Insanity
Ne zha is a character from the classic 17th-century Chinese fantasy novel Investiture of the Gods, or Creation of the Gods as a more modern title would have it. It's one of the four major Chinese classics that hasn't had a decent English translation since 1929. Ne Zha is a young demigod who loves to sow chaos. This animated movie series is one out of many others by different studios, but Chengdu Coco Cartoon's has the biggest budget and has the appeal of a Pixar movie but with more violence and insanely epic set pieces. It's still the equivalent of a PG-13 slapstick cartoon flick for all the family, and kids are into a god of chaos who looks and acts like a bratty kid. It's like Kung Fu Panda but with some teeth. Ne zha 2 is two hours and twenty minutes long, which is longer than Captain America: Brave New World. It's amazing that any kids managed to sit through a movie that long.
China feels like an alternate universe, with Western media mostly ignoring what's going on in film and pop culture there. They don't need us since they're largely self-sufficient, and either apathy and laziness or outright anti-Chinese sentiment means huge hits like Nezha 2, Detective Chinatown 1900, Creation of the Gods Part 2: Demon Storm and other Chinese New Year blockbusters are making the kinds of box office that Hollywood would salivate over and is still fretting about trying to achieve this year. Even Tsui Hark's Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants made over $168 million in a week, which makes it the highest-grossing wuxia movie ever. Everyone and their families in China are on vacation for eight days, so they all go to the movies. Many theatres have been struggling financially since COVID-19, and according to reports from China, the ticket sales for Ne Zha 2 have saved them from bankruptcy and will keep them going for the rest of the year. This is the kind of news Hollywood hopes for in their own box office right now, hoping for the next big blockbuster hit.
Nezha 2 opens in the US and Canada on February 14th. it's longer than Captain America: Brave New World by about ten minutes, not counting the end credits. Meanwhile, you can watch the first Ne zha movie legally on YouTube.
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