A24 had high hopes that Ne Zha 2 would cross over to U.S. audiences, especially with a slick English dub featuring Michelle Yeoh. Instead, it stumbled out of the gate with just $1.5 million from 2,228 theaters, which makes it the weakest wide-release debut of the year. For context, that’s less than some indie horror films manage with a fraction of the screens.
Of course, the U.S. release of the film is little more than a footnote. Ne Zha 2 has already pulled in a staggering $2.2 billion worldwide, with $2.17 billion of that coming from China alone. The film debuted on February 14 during Lunar New Year and immediately turned into a cultural phenomenon. In only 33 days, it became the highest-grossing animated movie in history, overtaking Pixar’s Inside Out 2. It’s also now the fifth biggest film of all time, sitting comfortably behind Titanic, Avatar and Avengers: Endgame.
To put that into perspective, only six other films have ever crossed the $2 billion threshold. Hollywood’s most recent comic book tentpoles look tiny by comparison. Captain America: Brave New World crawled to $343 million worldwide. And while Deadpool & Wolverine earned a very healthy $1.338 billion, it’s still nowhere near the Chinese juggernaut. In fact, superhero movies haven’t even broken the $700 million mark in 2025.
So why did Ne Zha 2 strike such a chord at home but fail to make an impression in the States? The answer may be in its cultural roots. The film draws from centuries-old Chinese mythology, specifically the tale of Ne Zha, a boy demigod who rejects his destiny as a destroyer and instead fights to protect humanity. That mythology is instantly recognizable and emotionally resonant in China, but less so for audiences unfamiliar with the Investiture of the Gods stories.
Director Jiaozi leaned hard into that mythological mayhem, delivering what has been described as a “144-minute barrage” of action, humor, and eye-popping animation. Chinese audiences ate it up, but for Western moviegoers, who are accustomed to superheroes in spandex rather than dragon-slaying child gods, it was always going to be a harder sell.
That didn’t stop A24 from trying, though. The studio brought in Michelle Yeoh to voice Lady Yin, Ne Zha’s mother, for the English-language release. Yeoh herself admitted she struggled with subtitles when she first saw the film in Hong Kong. “I left the theater thinking it needed to be dubbed in English,” she said. When A24 called her to join the cast, she responded without hesitation: “Hell yes… a beautiful way to cross the cultural bridge between East and West.”
Despite the flop opening stateside, Ne Zha 2 represents something bigger than box office numbers. For decades, Chinese animation was seen as second tier compared to Hollywood output. Now, a homegrown feature has out-earned every animated movie in history and set a record for the highest-grossing film ever in a single market, blowing past Star Wars: The Force Awakens by over a billion dollars.
The first Ne Zha in 2019 was already a landmark hit with $742 million worldwide. The sequel, made for around $80 million, has proven Chinese animation can not only compete with Hollywood but completely eclipse it. Whether or not U.S. audiences buy in doesn’t matter much anymore. Ne Zha 2 is a big winner.
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