What began as a child’s dream ended up becoming one of the most unexpected phenomena in China’s 2026 box office.
Sun Lifang knew nothing about 3D animation, but her son, Xin Yumeng, wanted to make a film. So she decided to learn from scratch to help him achieve it. Over approximately five years, mother and son worked on the project that would eventually become “Niu Lai”.
The film arrived in Chinese theaters on August 5, practically without advertising or a trailer, and with animation so rudimentary that the Internet began making fun of it. Some users even called it a “disaster-level” production.
During its first few days, it seemed destined to fail. There were days when the box office barely reached US$25, while memes, parodies, and criticism of its graphics, dubbing, and movements appeared on social media.
But the mockery ended up becoming free advertising.
People began going to the cinema simply to find out whether it really was as bad as people said on the Internet. And something even stranger happened: some viewers ended up defending the film precisely because of its handmade nature and because it had been made without the enormous budget of major productions.
The phenomenon caused “Niu Lai” to go from a few hundred viewers to becoming an unexpected hit. By August 20, it had already surpassed US$4,3 million at the Chinese box office.
And then came the detail that seems straight out of a movie: “Niu Lai” managed to surpass “The Odyssey”, by Christopher Nolan, in the daily Chinese box office rankings and ended up behind “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”.
The difference in scale is absurd. On one hand, major Hollywood productions have budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars. On the other, this film was born from the work of a mother who had to learn an entirely new discipline to help her son fulfill a dream.
What began with mockery ended up generating curiosity, and that curiosity led thousands of people to buy a ticket.
A film that cost just US$200 is now grossing millions and competing at the box office with Christopher Nolan and Spider-Man.