Why a Chinese Animated Film Has Made More Money Than Any Star Wars Sequel

Like its mischievous demigod protagonist, the Chinese animated fantasy film Ne Zha II has been a practically unstoppable force. Since its initial release in China, over Lunar New Year, the blockbuster has earned more than $2 billion worldwide. It’s now the highest-grossing film of 2025, the highest-grossing animated film of all time, and the highest-grossing non-English-language film in history.

The film has also been a magnet for conspiratorial chatter, with viewers and critics alike theorizing about the reasons for its box-office success. The film’s feverish run has been referred to by some English-language outlets as evidence of “national pride” in China; when it trounced Captain America: Brave New World in February, Reuters cited Ne Zha II’s victory as proof of China’s “hostility toward rival Hollywood offerings.” Yet as Slate’s Jenny Zhang noted, Chinese audiences—who are responsible for most of the film’s ticket sales so far—haven’t been uniformly supportive of the movie, leaving “verdicts ranging from negative to lukewarm to positive.” Some viewers, she observed, believe that the film’s imagery indeed contains hints of anti-American sentiment; others interpret its hero’s quest for individuality as subtle but sharp criticism of the Chinese Communist Party. When an English-language version of Ne Zha II was announced for an August debut in the United States, via a rare partnership between the Chinese company CMC Pictures and the indie distributor A24, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film’s theatrical release would be a “litmus test of the U.S. market’s appetite for Chinese storytelling.”

As it turns out, the results of that test were less than spectacular. Ne Zha II’s re-release, with a voice cast led by Michelle Yeoh, flopped at the U.S. box office last weekend, making just $1.5 million. But as Deadline pointed out, an English-subtitled version of the film had just been released stateside less than six months ago, not long after the Chinese debut. That release earned more than $20 million, which means that a not-insignificant number of Americans were willing to show up for the film in its original Chinese-language form.