The Terrible Movie That Chinese Audiences Can’t Stop Watching
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- Niu Lai (The Ox Comes) earned more than $7 million in China on a reported budget of no more than $500, outperforming The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day since a small distributor unceremoniously released it in early August.
- Xin Yumeng, a first-time director who started the project in 2021, animated the 86-minute film frame by frame on SketchUp—an architectural-modeling program—over five years, with his mother Sun Lifang co-writing the screenplay and singing the theme song.
- The film's virality on Chinese social media split audiences: some bought tickets to ridicule it as a meme, while others championed it as anti-AI art embodying the phrase huo ren gan, or "alive-human feeling."
- Theater workers drew hand-made posters, businesses produced plush toys of the bovine hero, fans wore cow masks to screenings, and underground viewings have popped up in major U.S. cities even though the film has no official American release.
- The phrase niu lai also means "the coming of a bull market," prompting some Chinese stock investors to buy tickets for good luck, and the calf-and-mother plot reflects filial piety—a distinctly Chinese cultural touchstone.
- Xin has said he partly kept going through the grueling production because he wanted to inspire viewers not to tang ping ("lie flat"), a 2021 trend in which Chinese young people rejected overwork.
Why it matters: Niu Lai's $7 million gross on a sub-$500 budget shows that handcrafted, AI-free Chinese stories can outperform major Hollywood releases in the domestic market. For director Xin Yumeng and his mother, the film's success proves an outsider passion project can attract massive audiences through social media virality and cultural resonance alone.
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