(Yicai) Aug. 18 -- China’s summer box office has found an unlikely breakout hit in Niu Lai, a rough-hewn animated film about a young calf’s adventures that took a mother-and-son team five years to make. The movie had already grossed more than CNY10 million (USD1.5 million) as of yesterday since its release on Aug. 5, with the final gross figure projected to approach CNY89 million (USD12.4 million).

The movie’s deliberately crude visual style has attracted considerable attention. Its production company, Dalian Jingyuan Cultural Film & Television Media, was a renovation company until 2021. Director Xin Yumeng and his mother, Sun Lifang, handled virtually every aspect of the production themselves, serving as directors, lead performers, screenwriters, voice actors and producers. Sun also composed and performed the film’s closing song.

After the film became a surprise hit, Xin and Sun declined all interviews. When Yicai visited the production house’s registered address, the reporters found a unit in an old residential building.

Despite the increasing maturity of artificial intelligence technology, the 3D animated movie was not produced using one-click AI image generation. Some viewers have compared its visual quality to Flash animations from more than 20 years ago.

The distributor said it initially advised the director not to release the finished film. However, Xin insisted on putting it in theaters. “They had worked so hard to finish it, so we decided to help get it into cinemas,” the distributor said.

Short videos about the movie attracted significant attention across major platforms last weekend, driving audiences to theaters. On Aug. 15, its daily box office soared from just several thousand Chinese yuan, equivalent to a few hundred US dollars, to CNY876,000 (USD130,000), while the number of nationwide screenings exceeded 2,000.

Niu Lai serves as both a vivid testament of ordinary people pursuing their dreams despite limited resources and an unusual animation experiment that uses deliberately rough aesthetics to push back against algorithm-driven perfection in the AI era.

“I really didn’t expect the theater to be full,” a viewer surnamed Mo told Yicai. She described the screenings as “a sea of laughter.” Some audience members filmed the screen with their phones, while others burst out laughing at the visuals and dialogue. Groups of young people sat together, laughing as they watched the giant, abstract cow faces on the screen.

After one screening, 60 strangers exchanged cow-themed items and even stayed to discuss the film. For Mo, when there is little else to do on a weekend, the sudden emergence of an event like this can provide a rare opportunity for a group of people to relax and be entertained. The movie itself becomes almost incidental and the laughter is the main attraction.

Industry insiders say the film’s breakout success can be attributed to three main reasons. The first is that it has resonated with stock-market investors. Chinese investors are highly sensitive to the character “niu,” meaning “bull.” The movie’s title Niu Lai can be interpreted as “the bull market is coming,” giving investors an easy slogan to embrace.

The second reason is that it taps into growing fatigue with the overly polished, industrialization of mainstream cinema. While major blockbusters rely on sophisticated visual effects, carefully calibrated genre storytelling and massive marketing campaigns to dominate the box office, Niu Lai takes the opposite approach. Its conspicuously rough production quality has unexpectedly opened up a completely different emotional outlet for audiences.

The third reason is that audience participation has begun to replace traditional rating systems. The laughter erupting in theaters has little to do with the film itself. During Niu Lai screenings, young viewers filming the screen on their smartphones has become a collective ritual. Audiences laugh together at the cheesy lines and spontaneously applaud at the end.

Editor: Kim Taylor