Can a filmmaker pretending to be asleep be awakened by “Nezha 2”?

Wen 丨 Cultural Value Officer Chen Tong

The 2025 Spring Festival finally came to a successful conclusion with many historic breakthroughs, including a total box office of 9.51 billion, 187 million movie-goers, and high single-day box office data innovation.

At the same time, the siphon effect of “Nezha’s Devil Boy Rakes in the Sea”(hereinafter referred to as “Nezha 2″) is still continuing. According to real-time data from Cat’s Eye Professional Edition, as of 14:30 on February 13,”Nezha 2” box office close to 9.7 billion yuan, becoming the first film in China’s film history to break 6 billion yuan. Once the industry’s forecast of a total box office of 14.257 billion yuan is realized, the film will not only top the global animated film box office list, but is also expected to hit the top seven in the global box office list, adding another highlight to the rise of China films and national comics.

Records are destined to be written into the history of China’s film, bringing a long-lost turning point to the film market. The segmented lead of the head film not only confirms the resilience and potential of China’s film market, but also exposes the shortcomings of most mid-waist content innovation and increasingly weak audience appeal. With feelings and routines constantly exhausted and winners taking all, China films have also entered a critical period of making great achievements and seeking a new way out.

Confidence effects are more important than economic effects

The average box office of the Spring Festival in 2025 will be close to 1.4 billion yuan per day, which can be said to have really given the movie market throughout the year a good start. The total box office of 9.5 billion yuan also proves that the audience has not abandoned movies and cinemas. This battle to defend the life and death of China’s film market was not only won, but also won quite well!

In terms of the total number of moviegoers, in the past ten Spring Festival festivals (2016 and 2025), this year’s 187 million moviegoers will win the championship without any doubt, which is compared with the second and third places (160 million in 2021 and 145 million in 2018). The improvement is obvious.

In terms of the number of people watching movies on a single screen, from nearly 40 million people in “Lost in Thailand” in 2012 to 159 million people in “Wolf Warrior 2” in 2017, and then to this time “Nezha 2” may create a new record. The number of people watching movies on a single screen, whether it is the overall market, the single screen and single-day market, the number of people watching movies has been elevated to an epic level.

There is another strange phenomenon during this year’s Spring Festival, that is, while movie tickets are openly increased, people’s enthusiasm for watching movies has not been extinguished. Cat’s Eye data shows that after falling for two consecutive years, the average ticket price for the Spring Festival has rebounded slightly to 50.8 yuan in 2025, an increase of 3.4%. During this recovery process, the ticket price increase in third-and fourth-tier cities is particularly significant. More than half of the average ticket price on the first day of the New Year in third-and fourth-tier cities exceeded 70 yuan.

These areas with the most humane society will become increasingly important ticket warehouses for theater films in the future, and the tastes of audiences in third-and fourth-tier cities will also more dominate the direction of China films.

Compared with the box office, the bucking trend of movie-goers after the increase in ticket prices has undoubtedly given reassurance to the industry. This means that the Spring Festival festival has attracted a large number of passers-by who don’t watch much movies, bringing a wave of fresh blood to the entire film market, providing motivation and space not only for the present, but also for the growth of the market in the future. It is a high-value expansion. Compared with the economic effect brought by the box office, the confidence effect is sometimes more precious.

Specifically,”Nezha 2″ contributed 5 billion yuan of the total box office of 9.5 billion yuan, accounting for more than half of the total, setting a record for five consecutive days. A film received more than half of the box office in the previous China film market has never been seen before, and it is not an exaggeration to change the name of Nezha during the Spring Festival in 2025.

The second-place “Tang Tan 1900” currently has a total box office exceeding 3 billion yuan. Although it is less than half of the box office of “Nezha 2”, it is still a good result in the market in recent years. As a prequel to the “Detective Chinatown” series, this sequel not only retains the comedy and suspense genes of the series, but also deeply explores the historical background, cleverly combines entertainment and ideological content, and provides new ideas for the creation of main melody films.

The third-place “Fengshen Part 2: War of War in the West”(hereinafter referred to as “Fengshen 2 “) currently has a total box office of nearly 1.2 billion yuan. Deng Chanyu’s successful portrayal has become the biggest highlight of the” Fengshen 2 “literary drama. The film depicts Deng Chanyu’s transformation of values with relatively strong pen and ink. This female general’s strength and beauty, love and pain, independence and awakening have given the audience a strong spiritual inspiration. Compared with the rise of kings, it is often easier for us to empathize with supporting roles who change our lives and indulge in the light of lonely heroes.“”

In addition to box office and character highlights, the exploration and progress of “Nezha 2” and “Fengshen 2” in terms of large-scale overall production process, professional team collaboration and international cooperation are also of great significance to China films. The success of these two films is the success of China’s film industrialization. Chinese superheroes can be comparable to Marvel superheroes. In fact, it is also a vivid reflection of the speed at which China’s film industrialization is catching up with the Premier League and the United States.

The audience is never leeks, just picky enough connoisseurs

Before the arrival of the Spring Festival in 2025, China’s film market has been in a quagmire for a long time, and anxiety and suspicion are tormenting everyone in the industry.

In 2024, the annual box office of movies in mainland China will only be 42.5 billion yuan, a decrease of more than 12 billion yuan compared with 2023. Various popular schedules have been hit on the streets one after another. Many films have also been boycotted throughout the year, and topics related to saving China movies have become frequent hot searches on Weibo.

At the end of the year, the film industry even shouted the slogan of keeping the Spring Festival slot, which was a battle for the survival of China films, which attracted netizens to ridicule that China films could only rely on poor sales to become hot searches.

Now judging from the results, the movie has not only kept the Spring Festival slot, but also proved that the domestic demand for movie-watching is still very strong. “Nezha 2″‘s fault lead in the box office just illustrates the so-called cold winter in the film and television industry. The real reason behind it is that film creators cannot produce high-quality films and always want to treat the audience like leeks. Many people want to go into theaters. People who consume cannot find a movie they want to watch.

Of course,”Nezha 2″ is not absolutely perfect, and there is still room for improvement in many special effects details. In order to take into account commercial attributes, the first half of the story incorporates some deliberate paragraphs. As a top work, the content is slightly out of line, but this phenomenal film is of sufficient significance to the industry to be recorded in film history.

“Nezha 2” uses a living case not only to severely slap the universal formula of indulging in big IP+ traffic stars + hot search marketing, but also calls on the big directors who save the movie to give a loud slap, and also wakes up the superstitious period. The industry gambler, who alone proves that truly good films can create movie-watching needs out of thin air.

When colleagues were still investing heavily in blue-haired and red-haired Smurfs created by five-hair special effects; When a movie version of the special effects lens was outsourced to three different companies, causing the protagonist to jump repeatedly between the desert and the green curtain; When a movie invited the top star, the Douban score was 5.3, and the audience angrily commented that the acting skills were not as good as shopping guides, the “Nezha 2” team had long been calm. The five-year sword was only to maintain quality. The fluttering effect of Nezha’s mixed sky silk tested 178 physical parameters.

The audience’s choice to vote with their feet completely tore apart the emperor’s new clothes in the film and television industry. Those directors who talk about their artistic pursuits on the red carpet in Cannes have ever thought that their works won’t even be able to keep 6 points on the ticketing platform? Every filmmaker waving flags and shouting all day long, wanting to force the audience into the cinema. Why don’t you shoot some normal films that don’t cut leeks or carry smuggled goods?

“Nezha 2” proves with its very impressive box office performance that China still has the top two film market in the world. It has never been that audiences do not support domestic films, but that audiences are becoming increasingly difficult to fool. It is already difficult to drive high box office by relying solely on attracting stars, creating topics, and selling corruption through marketing. If the story is not told well and the intention cannot withstand scrutiny, it will only be enough to fool the box office for a day or two at most.

Next, how to realize the value of this market is a question that every practitioner must think about. The easiest way is to let go of all distractions and produce truly excellent works. Don’t imagine that you can make a fortune by relying on other shortcuts.

We can’t just mass produce industrial waste, China films need to be established

Although the Spring Festival stalls can always create various box office myths, and players who can go to tables have the opportunity to get rich overnight, at the same time, the increasingly obvious Matthew effect also means huge risks. Thirty percent of the winners and seventy percent of the losers have become a normal situation, which also helps accelerate the elimination of defective products on the industrial assembly line.

In fact, the winner-take-all pattern is, to some extent, the audience’s revenge on the directors of certain bad films. In the past few years, there were too many garbage films that cut leeks. Some directors did not study scripts and used popular stars and shoddy special effects to attract the audience. The audience said that China films were hopeless if they were unwilling to eat shit, but they just didn’t realize that they were the shit.

An interesting phenomenon is that most of the popular films in recent years have been directed by newcomers outside the circle. Dumpling, Guo Fan, and Feng Ji are not from academic courses. These newcomers who work lightly are talented, arrogant, and almost paranoid artistic pursuits. The spirit in their works is completely different from the industrial waste before.

The demon combination composed of Nezha and Ao Bing represents a young force that is not bound by tradition. The two men’s statement that heaven and earth cannot tolerate each other will turn things around, which is perfectly consistent with the mentality of today’s young people who dare to confront rules and bravely pursue self-worth. In this special way, dumplings speak out the hearts of the younger generation, allowing them to find their own shadow in the movie and give them more courage to move forward bravely. This kind of sincerity and true resonance cannot be filmed by the great directors who are already in their old years.

It cannot be denied that those great directors who graduated from academic courses have once supported the sky of China films, changed the publicity and profit models of films, and the era of commercial blockbusters jointly launched has a profound impact on future generations.

But at the same time, over the past few decades, they have gradually monopolized industry resources and cut off the channels for talented and pursuing newcomers. The films of the powerful families who occupy the right to speak are getting worse and worse. While art falls into path dependence and simple repetition, it also complains about gambling agreements, reusing traffic, and booking venues in the early morning, making movies completely a tool for capital laundering.

In the future, if China films want to develop healthily and healthily, they must be established. Those directors who only want to make money and do not want to make good content and mass produce industrial waste should withdraw from the historical stage. It is not that China films are no longer working, but that they are not working. Otherwise, if you spend tens of yuan sitting still in the dark for two hours, watching plots that insult your IQ and stereotyped Internet celebrity faces, no audience is willing to go to the cinema.

Looking at it from another perspective, those winters of unscrupulous capital are a good thing for the audience and the industry. Only by clearing out poor and insincere creators and capital can China films truly rejuvenate.