Ne Zha 2 kicked off China’s 2025 box office with a strong start, grossing over 8.2 billion RMB ($1 billion USD) and garnering an 8.5/10 rating on film review site Douban since its January 29 release. It surpassed The Battle at Lake Changjin to become China’s highest-grossing film of all time. Ne Zha 2 also surpassed Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ North American earnings of $936 million USD to become the all-time highest-grossing film in a single market. The blockbuster is the only Chinese film to gross over 600 million RMB ($82 million USD) daily for five consecutive days.

Out of the seven movies released during the Lunar New Year holidays, Ne Zha 2’s box office more than doubled that of the second-highest-grossing film, Detective Chinatown 1900, which earned only 2.6 billion RMB ($357 million USD) so far. As the holiday season ends, a second wave of moviegoers — those who wished to avoid the holiday crowd — are expected to hit theaters. Maoyan Entertainment, China’s largest online movie ticketing website, estimates that the final box office will exceed 10 billion RMB ($1.3 billion USD).

Ne Zha 2 is the sequel to the 2019 hit Ne Zha, a spinoff of the Ming Dynasty fantasy novel Investiture of the Gods. The story follows the mythical figure Ne Zha, who overcomes his demonic curse and saves the mortal realm. Ne Zha was 2019’s highest-grossing Chinese film at 5 billion RMB ($690 million USD), China’s fifth top-grossing film of all time.

With reduced consumer spending during the pandemic years, neither 2020 nor 2022’s box office grossed over 30 billion RMB ($4.1 billion USD). The exception was 2021’s The Battle at Lake Changjin, which grossed 5.7 billion RMB ($782 million USD) and boosted 2021’s total gross to 47 billion RMB ($6.4 billion USD). 2024 was also a rough year at the box office, with a decrease of 12.4 billion RMB ($1.7 billion USD) compared to the previous year. In the years prior to the pandemic, the Chinese box office averaged 60 billion RMB ($8.2 billion USD) annually.

In recent years, imported films from Hollywood and elsewhere have lost momentum with Chinese audiences as the domestic industry has skyrocketed. According to the China Film Archive, 2024 welcomed 93 international movies, the most since 2019, with only Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire reaching a spot in the top 10. The last time a Hollywood film achieved top 5 in the Chinese box office was 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. It was also the only overseas movie to reach the top 10 in China’s all-time grossings list.

It may seem like China’s box office is bouncing back, but there is a known trend of the New Year holidays being the most profitable month for Chinese cinema. The other highly anticipated movies released alongside Ne Zha 2 — Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force, Operation Hadal, and The Legend of the Condor Heroes — all failed to meet audience expectations. It may be that Ne Zha 2’s success is an outlier and not a true representation for the anticipated recovery of Chinese cinema. Only time will tell if other films can capture the came commercial success as the year progresses.

Ne Zha 2 will be released in the U.S. on February 14. Cover image via Douban.