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A dark horse entry onto the summer movie season has become China’s top-grossing 2D animated film at the box office. In its third weekend (released August 2), Shanghai Animation Film Studio’s Nobody has climbed from the No. 2 to the No. 1 spot, overtaking Shen Ao’s Nanjing Massacre drama Dead to Rights with $32.9 million (RMB 237.1M) from Aug. 15-17.
Moreover, Nobody‘s cumulative box office of $138.5M (RMB 997M) secured its place as the highest-grossing 2D-animated theatrical release of all time in China; as of Monday, the film had surpassed RMB 1 billion. Nobody has earned an impressive audience review score of 8.5 on Douban. Despite a year-on-year decrease of 17.865% in China’s summer box office as reported by Maoyan on Saturday, the country’s film industry has reached RMB 10 billion in box office and pre-sales from June to August.
Nobody‘s surprise success puts it ahead of three internationally acclaimed Japanese animated features: Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume, (RMB 807M / $112.2M) and Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar winner The Boy and the Heron (RMB 791M) and Your Name. (RMB 713M), also by Shinkai. The plucky little piggy tale is not quite on the level of explosive success as Chengdu Coco Cartoon/Beijing Enlight Media’s 3D CG super hit Ne Zha 2 — which set a new record by reaching RMB 4 billion in just six days of release and went on to become the world’s highest-grossing animated feature of all time with more than $2.2B. But, it is a stirring reminder that 2D is far from out of the global cinema game and another indicator of Chinese animation’s rapidly growing profile on the international scene.
Based on the popular anthology series Yao – Chinese Folktales (a.k.a. Chinese Bizarreries), which hit huge viewership numbers on Bilibili when it launched in 2023 and has since accumulated 360 million views, the mythic comedy-adventure follows a little pig demon who sets out from the Langlang mountains, teaming up with a toad demon, weasel demon and gorilla demon for an epic “Journey to the West” in an imitation of the classic novel’s monk hero Tang Sanzang and his three disciples. A consumer products campaign is already underway in China tied to the film.
Nobody‘s distinctive visuals honed by Shanghai Animation incorporate extensive use of traditional ink-wash painting techniques for a true-to-tradition Chinese style. As film supervisor Liaoyu Chen explained in a pre-release interview with Shanghai Observer, the animation team used real ink to build each frame, rather than merely recreating the look of ink. “For example,” Chen elaborated, “the two tusks of the little pig demon retain the hand-drawn arc lines, and these details are the most challenging aspects.” The film was written and directed by Yao – Chinese Folktales writer-director Shui Yu.
No North American theatrical or streaming partner has been announced in these early days, but interest is sure to be piqued by Nobody‘s rapidly forged status as a box office Somebody.
[Source: South China Morning Post, ScreenDaily]