Film follows a young boy with unique powers teaming up with a dragon prince to fight demons. Ne Zha 2 is a sequel to the 2019 fantasy adventure Ne Zha, which follows a young boy born with unique powers who teams up with dragon prince Ao Bing to fight demons and save the very community that fears him. The film series, written and directed by Jiaozi, is loosely based on a 16th-century novel, Investiture of the Gods, attributed to Xu Zhonglin.
![[Ne Zha 2 follows a young boy born with unique powers who teams up with dragon prince Ao Bing to fight demons and save the very community that fears him]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/02/06/10/10/Screenshot-2025-02-06-155534.png)
Ne Zha 2 has collected ¥5.8bn (£640m) at the box office so far. In the first week alone, the film made ¥4.84bn (£534m), setting the record for the most money made by a single film in the new year period, which runs from 28 January to 12 February. Driven by the success of Ne Zha 2, the Chinese box office saw the highest single-day collection of ¥1.8bn (£199m) across all releases on 29 January. Other major releases in theatres that contributed to the earnings were Detective Chinatown 1900 and Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force.
If those projections are met, Ne Zha 2 would beat Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens as the highest-grossing film in a single market. The space opera film made $936.7m (£754m) in North America. The numbers bode well for the Chinese film industry, even taking into account the fact that the lunar new year is generally one of its most lucrative periods. In 2024, total box office collections dropped 22.6 per cent from the previous year as a sluggish economy reportedly prompted moviegoers to stay home.
