Animated film Niulai defies poor reviews to become Chinese box office hit

• Animated film Niulai has become a box office hit in China after originally receiving poor reviews.
• The film was made over five years by a director and his mother, as reported by Red Star News, while the movie earned just 10,000 yuan in its first 10 days before total box office earnings reached 17.1 million yuan, according to Maoyan.
• Movie theatres displayed hand-drawn posters featuring slogans: “Come on over if you're into the bizarre” and “No refunds”.
• Viewers took to the Chinese movie-review platform Douban to comment on the film, with one writing “unbelievably terrible and eye-opening”.
• However, Zhong Jiaming, a vocational schoolteacher in Guangzhou, called it a rare find in an era when movies are often “visually exquisite and polished, but their stories can fail to engage.”

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Niulai: The ‘terrible’ mother-and-son animated film storming the Chinese box office