A mother-son team's low-budget film about a calf has become an unlikely box office hit in China, raking in 20,000 times its budget as Chinese audiences flock to watch Niu Lai. "Niu Lai," which translates roughly to "Here Comes the Ox/Cow," is a family film that initially drew online ridicule for its simple CGI graphics, which would not be out of place in the mid-90s. It opened to crickets when it hit theaters on August 5, earning just 7,000 yuan ($1,000) in its first 10 days.
In the days that followed, ticket sales skyrocketed as "Niu Lai" trended on social media, driving curious audiences to see the "so-bad-it's-good" film. Box office earnings have since surpassed 45 million yuan ($5.9 million)—about 20,000 times the reported $200 budget. Niu Lai is the culmination of more than five years of efforts by Xin Yumeng, 34, a landscape designer by trade, and founder of Dalian Jingyuan Culture Film and Television Media.
Xin taught himself animation and handled most of the film's production, including directing, modeling, animation, editing and male voice roles, while his mother, Sun Lifang, wrote the script, voiced female characters, and composed and performed the ending theme, Xin said in an interview with Chinese media outlet Guancha. The plot centers on the titular calf, who, in a dream, joins a skylark and leopard on a journey of adversity, sacrifice, and self-discovery and ultimately finds his footing. The character of the ox was chosen because that's Xin's father's birth year on the Chinese zodiac.
As for the messaging, "children should develop a persevering and resilient character from a young age," he told Guancha. "They can't let a little difficulty, a few setbacks, or even unfair treatment knock them down." Newsweek reached out by email to Dalian Jingyuan Culture Film and Television Media Co. with a request for comment. Li Qinyu, chief commentator at Chinese news outlet The Paper, likened it to a "form of bizarre performance art" and said the film's going viral could have been driven by a "rebellion against traditional aesthetics" and something different: raw, yet unpolished and free from AI.
"As bad as the film may be, in this era of AI it nonetheless allows people to glimpse a kind of pure passion," he said. The film has spawned Chinese accounts producing their own clips, with some using AI. Its popularity has also spilled beyond the big screen, with police in the Anhui Province city of Hefei reportedly using the movie for a traffic safety notice on social media, the Global Times reported.
The film's popularity has also translated into use outside China, with a Malaysian blood donation center in Johor and Dutch railway operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen seizing on the meme in recent social media posts, according to the Global Times. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: John Feng and Gray R.
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