#107 - Ne Zha 2's Secret Weapon(s) to Reach Global Top 10 Box-Office
32:47 Share

Hello everyone, I am with LJ, editor of the World of Chinese magazine, which commissions Middle Earth. Hi Aladdin. So LJ, what are the exclusive stories that you guys have worked on this issue 104? We focus on how urban Chinese residents are reconnecting with nature. So they are lacking nature now? Absolutely. They discovered that there is a serious lack of nature education among urban kids right now. It has a negative impact on them, but there is also a strong effort to change the situation.

In a related story, we explored how a well-designed zoo in Nanjing has attracted large group of followers and how it has inspired them to care more about nature and wildlife.

And so in this issue, what are the other articles? Yeah, we also took a cruise ship down the Yangtze River, traced the history of game consoles in China, and uncovered why Hunan Cuisine in particular is taking China by storm right now. So dear listeners, if you want to know more and support the podcast, go to theworldofchinese.com and order your latest copy.

This is not a shelter. I think it's better to take the women's clothes.

Hi everyone and welcome to Middle Earth, your source for insight into China's cultural industry. Listen on to those who are making a living by creating and distributing art or content into the world's second biggest cultural market. I'm your host Aladin Fahre. Recently, something incredible has happened in China's cultural industry. I mean, after Xia Hongshu and Black Myth Wukong, certainly a lot of stories are happening in 2025. One animated movie called Neja 2 has within one month broken into the world box office top 10.

With over 1.9 billion in revenue, it is actually the first non-English film to be in that category and the current best-selling animated film outperforming Inside Out 2 which was the previous title holder. That being said, over 99% of the tickets sold were in Chinese-speaking territories.

Hey, hello.

My name is Dalton and I've been in the animation business for over 28 years now. Crazy. I'm an animation film director, writer, producer, and consultant for many different groups. I've worked for Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, Netflix, Hulu, to name a few. And I'm happy to be here. Perfect.

Yeah, perfect name dropping. Thank you. And Dalton was actually on the episode 52 or 51 of the Middle Earth podcast where we talked solely about Chinese animation industry. Next to you in the chat box of Tencent Meeting, Lena Li. Hello. Hello.

So my name is Lina and actually I was entered into the animation business in 2008 and I worked in Shenzhen at FountaWalk Animation and in charge of global distribution. And then I moved to Shanghai and joined Shanghai Film Group and I was also in charge of the global business.

like both buy and sell Chinese products and overseas contents for movies and animation. Now I'm in Beijing and I was mainly in for the IP acquisitions for animation. Next to me in the office, Heili Zhao. Hello. Hi, I'm Heili. I'm a journalist slash editor at the World of Chinese Magazine, the sponsor of this podcast.

Okay, well, thank you guys. So today we'll mainly talk about how Neja was a good IP to adapt in the first place. You know, if any of you wants to one day break into the top 10 of, you know, the world's best selling film.

the film itself and the latest technology that they were used, and how some circumstances actually helped the film crush the competition. You should definitely go check the World of Chinese magazine. And so, for example, if you want to improve your Chinese on how to talk about the box office, you could definitely go and check the article, How to Talk About Box Office Performance Like a Pro. You can learn how the latest REMA can become a Baokuan in the race in Piaofeng.

So now I'm turning to Hayley and Lina. So for those who have never heard of Neja, and I guess like when I was, you know, researching a little bit like how the international press has covered the story, like I guess many people abroad, like at least the one who are into film box office and animation, I guess almost no one heard about the character ever before. So could you please describe a little bit who is he?

And for example, is he as famous as Sun Wukong? Nezha is a very famous kind of like icon character in Chinese folklore. Like anyone who like kind of grew up in China would be very familiar with Nezha as a concept and the story behind Nezha. I'm not sure it's like, how would it compare to like Sun Wukong? I would say like a

at the same level of popularity. But I guess Sun Wukong as the Monkey King is more popular on an international stage because they have the Japanese manga and the story is just more well-known. Lina, do you want to build up on that? Yeah, I believe so. I think Monkey King is more popular. But actually, Nojou is also...

similar as Monkey King. It came from the Buddhism.

from India. And then I changed the characters just to change the during different dynasties. And because at first the Noja was kind of a horrible and very bad monster. And then it evolved into more like more, maybe more cute or more abide by the Chinese

traditions. And then they, in the recent years, there was also two famous animation projects. One is animated movie made by Shanghai Animation Production Studio in 1979. And another one is a TV series made by CCTV. And so in these two animated projects, Noja became a very cute boy.

Okay, so we know that Nezha is a really popular character into the folklore stories in China. But Nezha 2 that we're talking about today is obviously the following story of Nezha 1 that came out actually in 2019. So Lina, could you talk a little bit about this first movie that came out more than five years ago?

Yeah, actually, when the first one movie, No Jail, it was already become a very big phenomenon for animation. The box office was around like 5 billion RMB.

And it already ranked the record for all the animated movies in China. In that way, it was so successful and the production studio invested more and also allowed the director more freedom during the creation and preparation for Nojia 2.

Yeah, Neja 1 was a really good movie. I still remember it vividly. Now, taking a sidestep, I'm wondering, Dalton, since you're all the creative in this panel conversation, could you talk to us a little bit more about the character of Neja itself, like the way it is being portrayed? Because for me, I sense it's a really, really interesting and funny character that is not plain, actually. Yeah, because characters like Neja have a duality, and...

What makes a good character is a conflicted character. So on the one hand, he's built to destroy and do things so-called bad in their universe, yet he has heart and feeling for the things that he does appreciate. So that duality creates a more interesting character and fun to write. Okay, now moving on to what I believe is the second reason why Neja 2 is breaking currently box office world record, is that we had to wait a long time for it.

And I guess the creative team took this decision in order to pursue quality. So Lina, as you are into this industry and you told me some bagua during our pre-interview, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about why we had to wait so long for this.

I think the most important reason is that the high quality required by the director. I think that's the basic element. And actually because they are successful of Nezha, Nezha 1, and also because there are so many left unreviewed stories behind. And the

for Nojatu. So the director called Xiaozi, naming dumplings, and actually had to make the story very tight and very well-read. And during his creation, actually he is very strict guy, a serious guy for

Can one director manage to, you know, strong arm the companies to, you know, make them to wait the release as much as he think it was valuable?

Actually, the main investment for the Nezha IP was Guangxian Media, who found Jiaozi at the very first time after his launch of the short movie and got a lot of global awards.

And then they invested in Jiaozi so that he set up an animation studio to produce the Nezha IP. So Guangxian Media actually was in charge of the IP quality as well, and also in charge of the distribution and the licensing and the merchandising business for this IP.

So when Jiaozi presents the scripts to Guangxian Media, even if it's a small spot of the script, Jiaozi has to readjust the whole structure because it's a very sophisticated structure of the whole movie and the universe. They did many changes during the script writing. And then also because Jiaozi has a very high quality of the animation,

and images, they did a lot of improvements for the post-production as well. And they even at the first time, they are not satisfied with the outsource post-production quality and they even refined the different studios until they are satisfied with the final quality.

So it takes such a long time. Okay, but that's great that they still managed to, you know, keep the vision and try to make this as good quality as possible. So now, Lina, since you're talking about the quality and Dalton, I'm wondering, because you didn't work on the production of Nejatu, but I'm sure with your naked eye, as you were embracing the movie in the theater, like, and maybe from your own industry knowledge and so on, like...

Could you tell us a little bit how does this movie is, you know, is using new advanced technique in animation? Did they, everyone is talking about AI recently. Did they use some special tool? I mean, what's under the hood basically? To my knowledge, they did use AI in a new way, but mostly we've been using AI in animation, 3D animation for years. We just don't call it AI. It's part of our rendering.

So in the old days, it was you render something and you did it in passes. So you have the characters rendered on one layer. You have the environment rendered in another layer. That process made it harder and longer for you to see as a director what you were getting in final output. And so your decision making was skewed sometimes and certain things look good as just the character or just the background, but seeing them together, you go, wait a minute.

Now I want to do this, I want to do this. And so those adjustments, depending on your budget, will allow for you to make those claims. AI currently is used now in rendering and the nature of the rendering that they use in this special, they created a dynamic Chinese ink wash engine, rendering engine for that film. And what it did was it allowed for them to do higher quality renders in a faster way so they can see things quicker

And usually on dynamic simulations such as like water, hair, cloth, it's very difficult to achieve those looks, especially with photorealism. But when you're rendering water and fur, it's done through particles and shaders. It's getting super nerdy about it. But having said all of that, it's a lot of processes and usually one or two teams. And nowadays they have AI to act as multiple teams.

and they can do more sophisticated rendering with less CPU power. So it takes a team not so big can look even larger and look like they spent way more time on the same thing.

And that's not just a great example of that, the newest one in particular. Lina, could you talk a bit regarding the scale of people working on the film? So, yeah, there were 4,000 people working on it, allegedly with more than 140 companies. So are they something that is you, I guess that's kind of the...

top of the game now in that industry. Yes, actually also because the length of the Nezha 2 is longer than Nezha 1 and the story became more sophisticated and also the number of characters may be twice as many as the first one, the first movie. So to make sure the quality, all the characters are actually remade

in Noja 2. And there was some very high quality and post-production scenes I could see from the movie, from Noja 2. And one of them, for example, is like the chains bound to the

to the monsters in the sea. Sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, so to give an explanation, some of the bad guys, they're all chained, like they come from a specific place in hell and they're all chained to it. So when they start attacking the town of Neja, like the really beginning of the movie, they are all chained to that place. And yeah, it's pretty impressive visual because they are not just running around. You can sense the chain moving

chaining them to hell is kind of an actual physical object that move as the character moves. Yeah, exactly. And I think this is the first one. It never appeared in other movies before, in other animation movies before. And so they took a long time to overcome the technical issues.

only for this post-production and it took four months to finish it from the beginning of the idea to the completion of the post-production. To add to what she said though, and this is where AI comes in, whereas like if you're rendering something that can't be visibly seen on the screen, to give you an example, the human eye can only see within a dime, the size of a dime,

on any given point. So your eye is constantly traveling across the screen to focus. Now having said that, we do notice when things are not there.

Naturally, the camera, the lens that you're using, even though it's not a real film, in 3D, we use 3D lenses that are like real film. To give you an example of what that means, it's having depth of field as if you can do adjustments to different lengths and focal lengths. So if you're rendering a bunch of stuff that the human eye can't detect, it's a waste of time.

And AI is figuring out ways of how to negotiate that based on where your focal lengths are. Having said that, you can downscale how tough and rigorous the rendering is for characters a thousand miles off versus something much closer and in your face. And so it knows how to appropriately give the right amount of data to those spots in real time in some cases.

So a lot of that has to do with the nature of AI and how sophisticated it has gotten. Regarding Delta and then regarding, because recently, for example, DeepSeek has caught the global press attention and I'm using DeepSeek every day now. Thank you guys. But I'm wondering when you're describing those AI tools, is it tools that are available in that industry everywhere in the world or some Chinese company have managed to

managed to make better use of those tools? Let's put it this way. 3D animation is open to, in theory, open source. That's why we have one program called Blender as an example. You don't have to pay for it and everyone can use it. All 3D language is all the same because it's all the same coding and it has to pass through the same machines in order to work collectively for one image.

or to be shared even. So we're all using very similar language anyway. What ends up happening though, like Naja did, we're creating their ink style rendering system. Every group has their own format

version of how that technology should work for them and how they're suited to do it. So basically you tailor the tools to your team. So the logic on how to get there is based on consensus. When you talk about AI, AI is using a consensus mechanism, which is to say it's learning from all of the data that's available.

All right, so we know that Neja has been a great story to adapt. We do know that great technology has been used. Now I think we should talk about, in my opinion, which is the last and third element of why the movie managed to break the box office at the end of it. Lina, I was wondering if you could explain to the audience what is the Chinese New Year cinema time slot? Actually, the Chinese New Year slot is considered...

considered to be one of the biggest major slots in China during the whole year. And actually it's maybe top one most of the time compared with the summer vacation slots because the Chinese people will have mostly will have like seven or eight days of vacation for Chinese New Year and they will spend their time with their parents and families. So they will have enough time to go to this

to watch movie during that vacation because it's in winter and the spring Chinese New Year and they have enough time and the weather is

too cold in most of the areas in China and they have very little chance to have other activities or events. So to watching movies became one of the biggest events for the family. I also feel it's like, you know, you've been cooking up with your relative for like three, four days and you can't take it anymore. You're tired of getting those weird questions about your life choices and you're like, okay, you know what? I need to see a movie right now. You know what? Actually,

During Chinese New Year, some parents would set their kids up to go on blind dates. And some people would just go to the movie theater for those blind dates. And I've seen people complain online, oh, I've seen Nuo Zhao for three times this Chinese New Year because my parents keep setting me up with different guys. So we just go to the theater and watch the film. Yeah.

Yeah, and also if the people, especially for the young people, if they are tired of to spend time with the other irrelevant friends from their families, they will go to the theaters, especially on the first day of the spring festival. So usually the movies, the distributors will have a lot of sponsors and promotions for the first day

during the lunch time to invite and attract enough people

to making the higher box office. Yeah. And that's the thing is that for this year, uh, they were in total six movies competing for this Chun Jie box office. I mean, even that was funny because as I'm releasing my, uh, video talking about cinema on Xia Hongshu and Bilibili, like there were Xia Hongshu were actively pushing us, telling us, Hey, if you have any video about the Chun Jie box office, about those movie coming up, like do a video about this, like we'll promote it. Maybe we'll make some money out of that. Uh,

I didn't see anything. I didn't earn any liu liang or anything, but anyway. But out of the...

it seems like Neja was basically the best out of those six movies because the five other movies, I'm not going to recap all of them, but you had like also The Boony Bear, which is another animation. You had like some kind of, with a submarine. You had Feng Shuan Ha, you had The Legend of the Condor Heroes. I think I'm forgetting one, but it seems that basically all the other movies, basically they kind of

Like none of them were good and Nezha was good. And that's also one of the reason why I guess people went to see it. Actually, before the spring, before the vacation, most of the people think is the strongest sloth this time because the six movies are very big properties in China already. Or there is very successful first movie called

years ago or it was with very big actors or directors. But actually, during the first day and two, the audience already watched some movies and they are not satisfied with the latest one. So they focus on the one movie, that is Nojia 2. Especially from the third day of the vacation, the box office of Nojia 2 became boomed.

And so the box office figures are just getting higher and higher. Yeah, I guess it comes down to what Dalton said. If the story must be good, then people will go see it. Yeah, there's definitely that word-of-mouth effect. If your friends all tell you that this is a good movie, you have to go see it, you will definitely do. It's more convincing than seeing it online from some anonymous people telling you to watch it.

Like Aladdin. I'm not at that level. But also, to double down, I honestly think, and I said it before, Nadja is iconic. That's China's astro boy.

You guys have made something that's like a phenomenon. From now on, when you see that face and that character style, you know exactly what it means. And you know the quality attached to it. So this attachment to that is the main reason why Disney's legacy is so long. When we see Disney movies, regardless, you know kind of what you're going to get because of what comes with that.

And in order to do that, you have to make an iconic character, something that becomes beyond, like a phenomenon. And Nezha is that thing. Like not since Monkey King or Sohu Kong have we seen something like that. And honestly, when you see it, it's undeniable. It was interesting when we had our pre-interview, Dalton, you told me Nezha was becoming like a China Mickey Mouse. Yes. I think that was a really good analogy. But yet at the same time, what I'm quite wondering, because...

Neja and any big Chinese blockbuster, they are just going to make 1% of their box office in the world on the international market, which compared to a Hollywood movie would be like they make 60% of their money all across the globe. So I'm just wondering like how much, like what, I think it's kind of a double-edged sword. Like Neja is great because it can work really well in the home turf.

But then as soon as you want to go across other countries and culture, this is going to be so complicated. Unless you're really into Chinese culture or unless you are from a Chinese or East Asian family, I think this is going to be really hard for people to understand what the story is about. I mean, even for Chinese audience, sometimes they have to put title cards of, oh, by the way, this dragon, that's his name, so that people can remember him.

Correct.

We're confusing a lot of there's advertising, licensing, distribution, right? And each of those things are different. Now, the West has already established itself as building up a kind of synchronicity between those those main things, those four main things for people to see things. So having said that, when China breaks out with a movie, they have to pay to play.

So there's no way they're going to profit the same way these other guys have when they're not the main distribution. Currently, the way it works is like Naja would have to team up with another company. And unfortunately, those companies, they make you pay to play because they've built the apparatus for that to work for themselves. So they're always going to capitalize it more than you would. So that's why you're going to see those big discrepancies in the numbers. But it has little to do with the quality of what we're talking about. Hmm.

I'm not sure I would agree with you, but yeah. Lina, you work in distribution, so what would be your take on Nezha taking the world by storm? Yeah, for the global market, I think it's still kind of considered as Chinese movie instead of global movie. One of the reasons is that it's still based on the traditional Chinese fairy tales.

or Chinese stories. There are so many, how to say, difficult names for the Westerners to understand at the very first beginning. And also because the distribution ability and if we don't have enough screens for nojia 2, even the audience

to watch. They don't have their channels. Correct. Not to cut you off, but I've been seeing people on Reddit argue about this. It's crazy. But my point is, seriously, it's not necessarily a quality issue when there's

literally Marvel's making billions of dollars on non-quality films. It's the ability to see it, it makes a huge difference. Second, I think right now though, Nadja is in a sweet spot, this film in particular, because of what Netflix just did with China, or rather Japan, by buying out the rights to show some of the top Japanese anime.

worldwide for streaming both for film and TV. Crazy the amount of money they just spent. Amazon and these guys are really in trouble. So they're trying to find a way to be able to distribute and get people to watch their platforms. Here's a perfect movie to swoop in and do that. Nadja has a nice spot. It has sophisticated enough fighting and action that will appeal to adults, but it's also tender enough for families and children.

So having said that, I was like, man, this is like if any film could break some serious numbers, it could be this just based on where these guys are positioned. They need to compete. And China has the right type of tools and also IP that is primed for this type of stuff.

If it's allowed. So we'll see how it plays out. Well, I think my last question is just like any last word for the audience. Like we're reaching the end of our shows. Do you have any like one last key information that you think the audience should know? Oh, I just add a little bit on like what we're previously talking about. Cause I lived in the, in the States for a period of time and it is very hard to

for Chinese people or even like Americans to watch Chinese films because no theater is showing it. Even with Nezha, there is only like very few like AMC theaters that are showing them. And they don't have very favorable slots like scheduling. You only have like three showings per day. That's compared to like

10, 20 Captain America. Which is such a great film. So, so yeah, that like,

That's for sure not going to be great for your box office numbers. And also, I feel like whenever we're talking about movies going overseas, we always automatically think America, Europe. But actually, Nezha is a concept that can resonate very well with Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam and China.

where the character is also known in that culture. Yeah, because currently as time of recording, it seems it's only been like in New Zealand, Australia and the US. I guess some people are most like, I'm sure some people are writing contracts as we speak so that we can put them in other countries.

That's true. Yeah, because I've seen a lot of clips of the film, of the trailer on TikTok that has the caption in Vietnamese that has been getting a lot of views and people are asking in the comment, where can I see this? So there's definitely...

room for it to explore. It's just like taking time to get there because there hasn't been such a film in the Chinese film industry before to reach this level and this quality to

for the producers and the distributor to really go work on the global market. Well, thank you guys for sharing all your thoughts and your inside information regarding the creation and distribution of Nezha, which I still do think the first one was a little bit better in terms of storytelling. Because the first one is the story that most people are most familiar with about Nezha. And the second one is kind of really...

kind of going off the traditional script because there's a lot of like the director's own interpretation in the second film. Well, maybe he could have interpreted it better, but I guess... That's your opinion. I'm not the movie director of a top five box office, so I guess I can just go eat rocks. Anyway...

So on that note, we'll wrap up the show. Glad to have you until the end, dear listeners. I guess you like the show. And if you do, you can help the Middle Earth Podcast to grow by recommending us to your friends. Let me remind you that Middle Earth is part of TWOC, the World of Chinese Podcast Network. If you want to know more behind the headlines, go to theworldofchinese.com and order your latest copy. Today's episode was produced and edited by Aladin Fahre. Music by Sean Calvo. And distributed by the World of Chinese Podcast Network. Up to you next time and thank you guys again for coming. Bye.

Bye-bye. Looks like our listeners are still doing their dishes. We're really committed to their workout. For sure. Since we're still here, if you want to learn more about Chinese society, culture, and language, you should head to theworldofchinese.com and follow us on WeChat, TikTok, and Instagram, where you'll discover an impressive collection of award-winning in-depth stories and fun, informative videos, as well as amazing podcasts. Of course. Well, until the next issue then.