r/boxoffice • u/Suspicious-Bad4703 • Feb 20 '25
International 'Ne Zha 2' Is Highest-Grossing Animated Movie Ever Worldwide, Tops $1.7B | 8th Highest Grossing Film of All Time
https://deadline.com/2025/02/ne-zha-2-biggest-animated-film-ever-1236296068/44
u/NIDORAX Feb 21 '25
The first movie in 2019 made a lot of money as well. If I recall, the 1st movie made roughly $742.7million in 2019.
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u/MingoUSA Feb 21 '25
And the director Jiaozi invested all the money he made from the 1st one, like 70 million USD, into the 2nd movie, almost 10 times the budget of the first one.
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u/TikkiEXX77 Feb 21 '25
Watched it on Netflix. Was pretty good actually
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u/Krountedww Feb 21 '25
the one you must have watched in Netflix was the 2021 one, made by a different company, not Nezha 1 (2019)
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u/TikkiEXX77 Feb 21 '25
Think you're right. Gonna have to hunt down the original version
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u/GGAnth Feb 21 '25
It's in Kanopy. You can have access (likely but not 100% sure) with your local library membership.
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u/criminal3 Feb 21 '25
They had the 2019 one on Netflix for a while as well, but I guess they lost the rights.
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u/JazzySugarcakes88 Feb 20 '25
In the future, I predict that Detective Chinatown 4 or another R rated Chinese movie will dethrone Deadpool & Wolverine as the highest grossing R rated movie of all time
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u/Dispensor2007 DC Feb 20 '25
Detective Chinatown 2 was wrongfully rated R for brief language even though it only had 2 f words which should be allowed in PG-13 movies. The Creator was even rated PG-13 when it had 5 f words!
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u/SureTangerine361 Feb 21 '25
Well, China does not rate movies, so technically this will never happen.
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u/PercentageDazzling Feb 21 '25
Detective Chinatown 2 and 3 were released in the United States and actually got an R rating from the MPA. So it's possible another comedy could release in the US and be rated R to break the record.
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u/JazzySugarcakes88 Feb 21 '25
The only movie that has a chance to beat Deadpool and Wolverine is The Resurrection of the Christ, and that can only beat it domestically
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u/Firefox72 Best of 2023 Winner Feb 20 '25
Detective Chinatown 4 will have to be by far the best entry in the franchise thats not exactly known for its top quality.
DC3 could have been a $1B movie had it not been terrible. And that alone set the franchise back below $500M total with DC 1900.
And while DC1900 repaired some audience trust its still an incredibly tall task to get numbers required to pass $1.3B
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u/Express-World-8473 Feb 21 '25
Yeah I was really looking forward to DC3, but the movie was such a disappointment after a great second part. Compared to that, Hi mom was way better that year.
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u/DecayingNightscape Feb 20 '25
Not impossible but will be tough, that franchise has not been able to across ¥5B yet, its highest grossing entry with today's exchange rate is just about $625M or so, to more than double that in the next entry will take a lot. Though who knows, NeZha 2's number seems basically impossible a month ago.
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u/Consuela_no_no Feb 21 '25
DC4 will have to be better than 1, as 2 & 3 were ok the lower end quality wise, to make that amount.
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u/SecureDonkey Feb 21 '25
Doubt it consider Chinese market are mostly family going to movie together so the "not family friendly" movie wouldn't go that well over there. The only thing make Deadpool go well is because people still think that Marvel is for children.
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u/spinal888 Feb 21 '25
Besides the fun story and crazy animation, one huge sale point is that the movie pays big tribute to the funniest movie star in Chinese movie history, Stephen Chow(kungfu, shaolin soccer). There are many dialogues in the movie referencing famous acts from his movies.
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u/ImNotHighFunctioning Feb 21 '25
I'm pissed my drive got corrupted and I can't watch the original and Jiang Ziya in preparation for whenever this is released digitally 😭 I had them in Chinese and I can't find them (legally) anywhere. All I can find is the dubs...
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u/kaje10110 Feb 21 '25
YouTube has Nezha 1 for free if you live in US. You can change audio track to Chinese.
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u/Zardhas Feb 21 '25
I had them in Chinese and I can't find them (legally) anywhere.
Then go for the seven seas.
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u/ImNotHighFunctioning Feb 21 '25
Yeah that was my point. I had them from the seven seas, but the drive I had them in was corrupted.
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u/Digifan1999 Feb 21 '25
I still can't believe it. Inside Out 2 was #1 for five months and this film dethroned it in just four weeks. As much as I love and support Pixar, Inside Out 2 wasn't the film I thought it deserved the crown. I am glad this film sending Hollywood a message that we want diverse stories and not junk cash grab films. But I still haven't forgave China for dethroning Endgame after rereleasing Avatar.
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u/TigerGroundbreaking Feb 22 '25
What? Inside out 2 wasn't just a cash grab and was a really good movie.
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u/Block-Busted Feb 21 '25
In what bizarro world is Inside Out 2 even close to being a cash grab? Also, if being a sequel is a cash grab, you DO realize that this is a sequel, right?
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u/Digifan1999 Feb 22 '25
I wouldn't call it as a cash grab as Pixar movies never felt like one except for Cars 2. Inside Out 2 is a good movie but there were times I felt Anxiety and the other emotions should have popped up when Riley starts middle school instead of hockey camp.
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u/Ok_Power1067 Feb 22 '25
As much as I enjoyed inside out 2. The plot is too similar to the first one, just different emotions.
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u/Block-Busted Feb 22 '25
Well, this film’s plot is still noticeably weaker.
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u/Ok_Power1067 Feb 22 '25
Yeah Ne Zha 2 plot felt a bit rushed but the animation and action scenes make up to it. In my opinion. It gives it an 8/10 movie
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u/One_Lobster2803 Feb 28 '25
Yeah Ne Zha 2 is more deserving in that title, and just doesn't seems to like what is Pixar doing with their sequel, to just retreating the first movie most of the time is not fun
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u/Ok_Satisfaction8788 Feb 21 '25
So what is this gonna end at? Number 5 all time? Between TFA and Titanic?
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u/Express-World-8473 Feb 21 '25
The minimum it will surpass spiderman No way home and at the other end of predictions, it will surpass Avatar 2.
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u/BuildingLess1814 Feb 21 '25
Yeah, no.
This movie will end up as #1 of all time since it's run is not even over. There's a good 4-5 months for a film's run at bare minimum.
It's already broken Inside Out 2 as the highest grossing animated film of all time, it's going to end up as #1 of the world and the Chinese are allowing this to happen all to destroy America.
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u/Recent-Ad4218 Feb 21 '25
Won't touch Avengers endgame or the first Avatar
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u/Marnige Feb 23 '25
I do think the movie have yet run it's course, it only just started internationally and haven't even release in some places. If it does well, perhaps this might happen.
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u/Recent-Ad4218 Feb 23 '25 edited Feb 23 '25
It's not earning enough outside china warrant that opinion
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u/BuildingLess1814 Feb 21 '25
Sadly it will.
It's inevitable!
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u/Recent-Ad4218 Feb 21 '25
It's predicted to end at 2.1- 2.2 billion by Chinese box office sites like Maoyan. Where did you get the idea that nezha 2 gonna catch endgame and avatar?
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u/One_Lobster2803 Feb 28 '25
Lol what's is this narrative..
Ne Zha 2 isn't gonna stick around for 4 to 5 months in cinema even in China
movies releases in China had predestined dated
and they were had to taken out Endgame early, because the movie is doing "to well" to their CCP liking
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u/Resilient_Material14 Feb 21 '25
Good for China.
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u/Odd-Size-5239 Feb 21 '25
Not good for America
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u/best_second_guess Feb 21 '25
This is #67,409,218,467 on the list of things that aren’t good for America.
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u/InuKaT Feb 21 '25
Saw this movie today. I tried to keep my expectations low because I couldn’t find any reviews where it didn’t feel like the reviewer was reading off a script while being held at gunpoint. Also watched the first movie in 2019 and thought it was extremely mid.
Contrary to the hype the movie has its flaws. Some jokes were pretty funny but a handful of few felt like they were trying too hard. Story and pacing were also a bit awkward at times, I felt like a lot of emotional scenes were rushed and wished they were more fleshed out.
However I don’t think I’ve seen an animated movie with so many fight scenes before and some of the action sequences are just peak. Not everything was choreographically or stylistically memorable, but it was highly entertaining throughout. IMO I wouldn’t say it’s up to the hype of the glazers - there are far more animated movies recently that hit me harder emotionally and visually despite grossing less at the box office (Puss in Boots 2, Spiderverse 2, Wild Robot), but it’s definitely worth watching over skipping. I’d rewatch it again.
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u/Block-Busted Feb 21 '25
I actually thought the opposite regarding emotional scenes since I felt like they were too drawn out.
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u/InuKaT Feb 21 '25
By rushed and not fleshed out I mean they didn’t really have that much substance to them. I think the screen time given to them was fine, but the script didn’t really do much for much meaningful character growth and some it felt cheap deep. I felt like they were just there but the movie still felt more plot driven than character driven.
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u/liujoey Feb 23 '25
any chance the culture difference and language barrier makes you feel less connected to the eastern characters and the myth plots?
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u/InuKaT Feb 23 '25 edited Feb 23 '25
I'm actually Chinese but I was born in Canada. I grew up with a lot of the older animations with my favourite and most nostalgic being The Legend of Nezha. I have an okay understanding of the lore behind most of the artifacts and locations, so following the movie's plot wasn't an issue and I was able to predict some of the later plot points based on the foreshadowing earlier on.
My Chinese isn't very good, so I know I'm missing a lot of the nuances in the in the dialogue but even I can tell the English translation isn't perfect and is missing a lot of the poetry. I think a native speaker will be definitely be able to appreciate the script better than I did.
There was also some minor stuff that bothered me and felt like lazy storywriting. For example (SPOILERS), Nezha's parents are able to fly in the second movie, which I don't remember happening in the first movie. It just felt like they were given the ability to fly because the plot demanded them to be present at certain locations only reachable by flight.
Nezha's mother being written as a capable fighter was whatever to me. Her character in previous media I've seen was always a protective, loving mother with no fighting capability making her much weaker physically than Nezha, yet she still found ways and made sacrifices to protect her child. I feel that making her a capable warrior did lessen the emotional impact of the climax for me despite it being my favourite non-action scene in the movie.
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u/KhaLe18 Feb 21 '25
I haven't watched it, but I think this is probably the closest to accurate description of it, going by both the first one and some of the reviews on Duoban.
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u/Individual_Talk4142 Feb 21 '25
Hyped to see it now
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u/NeighborhoodBest4148 Feb 22 '25
Good luck getting a good seat.
In every one of my local theaters there are only corner seats or front seats left for good (evening/weekend) showtimes.
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u/Hinkle94 Feb 21 '25
Had not heard of this series until about 3 weeks ago when my wife (who is Chinese) told me she wanted to see it. We watched the first one at home, which I thought was pretty good after it got through all of the table-setting.
The second film blew me away. I'm generally fatigued by superhero-y action fight set pieces. This movie has a ton of them, but each one is unique, interesting, and visually coherent. The world building is its biggest strength. Both films, particularly the second one, are propelled by characters with political motivations. I won't say this is baby's first game of thrones, but it does sort of have that flavor? It's quite good.
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u/AvangeliceMY9088 Feb 21 '25
So many angry/butthurt redditors not taking the time to Google up who Nazha is who is one diety out of many in the taoist belief and even angrier seeing China do well.
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Feb 24 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/AvangeliceMY9088 Feb 24 '25
I beg to disagree. I do not understand why Americans cannot accept that China can do something good and nt think it's the Chinese goverment propping them up. Years of western media making China as the boogeyman seems to have instilled something in the American psyche.
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u/Chulinfather Feb 21 '25
Cool!!! Now tell me, what the fuck is ‘ne zha’?
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u/bloodyturtle Feb 21 '25
Probably the second most famous character in Chinese literary mythology after Wukong
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u/SecureDonkey Feb 21 '25
Funny thing is, both of them aren't actually mythology figures. They are just characters from two most popular Chinese novels, no one actually worship them.
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u/kaje10110 Feb 21 '25
You obviously do not know what you are talking about. Nezha worship is crazy in Taiwan. He is always part of religious parade. Here is the list of his temples in Taiwan.
https://temples.tw/list?god=%E4%B8%89%E5%A4%AA%E5%AD%90
Btw, he’s not referred as Nezha by his followers but “Third Prince” or “Prince”. We do not call him Nezha. If you are praying to him, you must refer to him as “your royal highness”.
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u/ThroughTheSeaOfTime Feb 21 '25
You don't have to worship a character for them to be mythological.
They have to be from myths and folklore, that's it. The old Norse didn't worship Jormungandr, the Irish didn't worship Morrigan, etc.
The vast majority of ancient Greeks worshipped Zeus, but that doesn't mean they all also unanimously thought something like the Minotaur deserved worship, or even that it was real. The Minotaur is still mythological.
All that really matters is that they have myths and stories featuring them, people didn't even need to believe they were true at the time for it to be mythology.
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u/SecureDonkey Feb 21 '25
Even that, there is no myth of them other than from the novel either. They are both from fanfiction novel featuring Gods from the actual mytho. Think of them like Kratos from God of War or Yato from Noragami.
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u/MorbillionDollars Feb 21 '25
The fact that they're from a fan fiction esque novel written far after the original creation doesn't exclude them from being considered mythology though.
Mythology is constantly shaped and reshaped by later interpretations, what we think of as "greek mythology" wasn't something that was created and set in stone. There were hundreds of prominent mythographers who contributed their own "fan fictions" over a 1000+ year time span, and we collectively consider all of it to be under the umbrella of "greek mythology".
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u/SecureDonkey Feb 21 '25
But the character is OC and 100% fiction, there no myth before or after they was create.
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u/MorbillionDollars Feb 21 '25
Dawg do you think the greek gods were real? Do you think they actually existed? No, obviously not, the gods are characters in stories. Stories that were created to explain phenomena they didn't have the answers to at the time, explore human nature and morality, create a basis for religious procedures, or just simply to provide entertainment.
Literally all myths are fictional and made up, every mythological figure was an "OC" and "100% fiction" at some point, the only difference is when they were made up. Gods like Hecate and Eros were created multiple centuries later than gods like Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon.
Why are you so opposed to the idea of calling nezha and wukong mythological figures? Your requirements are so arbitrary.
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u/kaje10110 Feb 21 '25
You should read up on Nezha’s Chinese wiki page (not English page since that one is extremely short). Nezha’s story has been recorded in books hundreds of years before Investiture of the Gods. He was definitely in folktales before it was ever written down. Just like Snow White is not created by Disney nor Grimms brothers.
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u/B_art_account Feb 21 '25
The novel is similar to the Odyssey where it's based on myths people worshiped already, bit it was mostly word of mouth and not written
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u/hemareddit Feb 21 '25
You can say the same about Ovid’s works, but they are considered mythology today.
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u/darthsheldoninkwizy Feb 21 '25
Who now ho it would look like for next thousands years, maybe Kratos and Xena will be cosider as part of greek mythos added in later period.
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u/t3rmina1 Feb 21 '25
Nezha is an actual Buddhist deity with roots from Indian mythology. Wukong was created for the novel Journey to the West. However, he interacts with actual mythological figures in the novel, such as Nezha.
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u/Okilokijoki Feb 21 '25
Ne zha and Sun Wukong are both Taoist deities and are worshipped in Taoist temples. They are not worshipped by Buddhists.
It's kind of confusing for Wukong because canonically he became Buddhist, but think of how Jesus is a Christian God despite being Jewish.
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u/t3rmina1 Feb 21 '25
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%93%AA%E5%90%92/35250
晋代时期 《佛所行赞经·第一生品》记载：“毗沙门天王，生那罗鸠婆，一切诸天众，皆悉大欢喜，王今生太子，迦毗罗卫国，一切诸人民，欢喜亦如是。”
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u/Okilokijoki Feb 21 '25 edited Feb 21 '25
You wouldn't introduce Zeus as a Roman god or define Christmas as a pagan holiday.
Ne zha today is a Taoist deity with influences from a previous Buddhist deity (with Hindu influences (likely with Indo-Iranian influences ))) . But today the deity called Nezha (and not Naluojiupo like the text you quoted or even Nazha like some later Buddhist texts called him) is a disciple of the Taoist Taiyi born in Chentang Pass who famously brought upon the wrath of Tianting (Taoist heaven). He is worshipped in Taoist/folk religion temples and not Buddhist ones so him in his Nezha form is not a Buddhist deity.
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u/t3rmina1 Feb 21 '25 edited Feb 21 '25
While he had gradually been taking on Taoist elements, and he had been worshipped by Buddhists and Taoists, it was the Investiture of the Gods or during that period around the 1500 and 1600s that codified his origin story and identity as a Taoist deity. That's pretty late in Chinese history.
In the Baidu article, during the Ming dynasty there's a mix of Buddhist and Taoist references to Nezha. https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%93%AA%E5%90%92/35250
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u/B_art_account Feb 21 '25
Idk about wukong, but Nezha is actually worshipped in China. He's the god protector of children and I'm pretty sure people have altars for him
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u/qqcar Feb 21 '25 edited Feb 21 '25
Wukong and Nezha are quite different when it comes to the origins of these two characters. You are right about Wukong, the prototype story of JTTW have existed for a few centuries before the novel, including a monkey and other beastly creatures that travelled with the monk(which was based on a real event that that took place during the Tang dynasty), but the Wukong that we know today is indeed an original character from the Novel JTTW.
However, Nezha was an actual god from ancient Chinese mythology that predates the novel fengshenyanyi by thousands of years. He was originally an Indian Buddhist deity known as Nalakuvara, and the earliest mention is recorded in this Buddhist scripture, the name was translated and shortened to Nazha in Chinese, and over millennia became Nezha. The the author of FSYY(Investiture of the Gods), took existing characters and creatures from mythology and folklores, including another extremely popular god Erlang Shen, and added lore and story to them, explaining how they eventually become gods, hence the novel's name.
A loose comparison would be the God of War game(JTTW/FSYY), where Kratos is an original character created by Santa Monica(Wukong), but characters like Zeus are deities from ancient mythology(Nezha).
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u/rainbowyuc Feb 21 '25
Not strictly true. While Wukong was originally from a 16th century novel, there are actual real life temples in his honor. And I have personally witnessed paintings of him put up in a building that was supposed to be haunted. I presume because of his demon-slaying reputation. I don't know if that counts as worship, but it's definitely worship adjacent.
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u/No_Candidate240 Feb 22 '25
Various legends, myths and folktales about Wukong, or superpower monkeys existed long before the 16th-century novel...The author Wu Cheng En just collected (or combined) them all into the book. The same with Ne Zha. Their stories existed way before...
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u/Chulinfather Feb 21 '25
Wow, that’s pretty cool. That much box office money in a single country… legendary
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u/B_art_account Feb 21 '25
God protector of children. His story is similar to wukong as in "everyone tells me I ain't shit, so I'm proving them wrong"
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u/Substantial_Share_17 Feb 22 '25
I wonder why Box Office Mojo has it listed as 10 mil dom. and 24 mil world.
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u/abellapa Feb 25 '25
WTF is happening
I Open this sub to check the box office of Brave New World and Then i see out of The blue that the Top 10 worldwide box Office just Changed with the entrance of a Chinese movie
HOLY SHIT
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u/AegonTheAuntFucker Feb 21 '25
Isn't Avatar the highest grossing animated movie?
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u/Oneforfortytwo Feb 21 '25
Avatar is live action. Having CGI doesn't automatically make a movie animated.
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u/d00mm4r1n3 Feb 21 '25
Belly flopped outside of China.
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u/MingoUSA Feb 21 '25
In New Zealand, Ne Zha 2 managed to beat Cap 4 in box office.
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u/SwimmingCircles2018 Feb 21 '25
Beating a Marvel movie in 2025 just means your movie wasn’t complete garbage. Most people still think Chris Evans is Captain America
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u/Markofdawn Feb 21 '25
Chinese mythological cultural story flops in other cultures. More on that at 6.
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u/kopibot Feb 21 '25
Meh. Not worthy of being remembered as a classic despite the massive numbers.
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u/B_art_account Feb 21 '25
How do you know?
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u/kopibot Feb 21 '25
Well... It's obviously not on the level of something like Titanic.
I could talk more about how it doesn't compare to Inside Out 2. How it's just another done to death, ultra-cliche power fantasy story where the protagonist, in the pursuit of power, goes around whacking villains and leveling up. Like a live action gacha game. But that would take up too much time, so I'll just end by saying that Chinese audiences have been starved of quality Chinese/HK productions for more than a decade now and this is not the return to form I expected.
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u/TheSeptuagintYT Laika Feb 21 '25
I predict this will end up #1 beating Avatar Endgame and even Star Wars Episode 7 TFA
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u/WavesNVibrations Feb 21 '25
This is like black myth wu-kong where the hype and numbers are basically only from the one place but it’ll be compared to other things that don’t even get the chance to fully air there like black panther.
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u/darthsheldoninkwizy Feb 21 '25
But you know that Black Panther had the most hype in the US while in the rest of the world it was just another Marvel movie.
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u/LackingStory Feb 20 '25
It's still crazy all that money was made in a single country! China never had a movie make more than 920 mil worldwide ever and their first film to break a billion breaks 2 billions? All in a single market? WTF!