There’s a strong chance you haven’t heard of Ne Zha 2, but it’s the highest grossing animated film of all time, and it just passed Spider-Man: No Way Home too.
A big problem when talking about the canon of successful, popular, and beloved media is that people tend to forget that not everything will be popular, or even available anywhere. Marvel and Disney movies might make lots of money over here, but they don’t everywhere. And despite Inside Out 2 taking home the record of being the highest grossing animated film ever made only last year, that record has already been beaten by a Chinese film called Ne Zha 2, which has so far managed to take home $1.89 billion in just China alone, a ridiculous feat in and of itself, and a couple hundred more than Inside Out 2’s global box office total.
Not only that, though, but Ne Zha 2 has now overtaken Spider-Man: No Way Home at the box office, as it now sits at the $1.92 billion mark, albeit slightly more than the webslinger’s similar figure. That now makes the animated film the seventh highest grossing film of all time, and it achieved such a feat in less than a month – the film came out January 29 in China, and was released in various countries this month, but again, most of its box office success has come from China alone. For some context, the first film, which came out in 2019, only grossed $726 million, more than a billion dollars less.
According to Variety, the film is predicted to reach $2.09 billion by the end of tis run, which would make it the fifth highest grossing movie of all time, above Avengers: Infinity War and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but still a good bit below Titanic’s fourth place with $2.25 billion. I guess I’ll have to track down the first film so I can see what all the fuss is about!