Ne Zha

The cute Ne Zha drafts died in the room.

Designer Shen Wei told China Daily the team drew more than 100 versions of the boy god. The early ones were adorable. Director Yang Yu, who works under the name Jiaozi, looked at them and said they "look fine, but that's also where the biggest problem is." He wanted a face people would reject. Dark circles. Crooked teeth. A hooligan grin. The movie is about prejudice as a curse. You cannot sell that with a polished orphan. Chinese audiences frowned at the posters, then bought tickets until the frown became the point. This is the 2019 film Ne Zha, Nezha: The Demon Boy Descends to Earth, latestnetflix.com contends, not the 2025 sequel that later ate the box office.

A Sichuan pharmacist directed it.

Jiaozi's previous credit was a short that won a special jury prize in Berlin. Beijing Enlight then financed a feature. Two years on the script. Three years in production. More than 1,318 effects shots. Over 20 Chinese VFX houses. More than 1,600 people. One scene took two months. Budget about $22 million. No movie stars in the voice booth. Child Ne Zha is Lu Yanting. Screen Daily later reported that China Film Huateng had a Beijing Intellectual Property Court case claiming the film copied story, design, and production elements from the stage show Memory 5D+. The court accepted the filing. Copying claims around a $742 million hit are how you know the hit landed.

America shrugged. China printed a universe.

China opened IMAX on July 13, 2019, and went wide on July 26. Three days, 600 million yuan, about $84 million. Opening weekend $91.5 million, a record for animation in the market. By August 2 it had passed Zootopia as China's highest-grossing animated film. Worldwide it finished around $742.7 million. Highest-grossing animated film from outside the United States at the time. Highest-grossing non-English animated film, passing Spirited Away. Well Go USA took it to North American IMAX on August 29 and a wider run on September 6. Domestic take about $3.7 million.

China sent it to the 92nd Oscars as Best International Feature, the first Chinese animated film in that category. It was not nominated. Jiaozi told the Los Angeles Times he still had not gotten used to the feeling. "Knowing the film was submitted still feels unbelievable." Ne Zha 2 arrived in 2025 and made over $2 billion. That is a different title. ScreenRant later flagged this 2019 original as leaving Netflix on August 21, 2026. A $742 million movie reduced to a countdown.

The U.S. Trailer still spoils half the ending. Well Go did not mind.