Like any good superhero, Ne Zha (pronounced “nuh jah”) must balance his superpowers with super-size personal turmoil. Born human but juggling the unearthly abilities of both a god and a reincarnated demon, the animated preteen at the center of this summer’s biggest blockbuster — one that in all likelihood you’ve never heard of — flies around courtesy of a red levitation ribbon while wearing a pair of flaming roller skates and armed with a fire-tipped spear and an earthquake-inducing Universe Ring. Alternately hailed as Third Lotus Prince and Marshal of the Central Altar, Ne Zha’s preferred identity is actually that of a prank-playing little shit.
His foremost power, of course, is as a box-office draw. To date, the Chinese-produced, 144-minute fantasy-action animation epic Ne Zha 2 has grossed $2.2 billion — 99 percent of that coming from China, where it arrived as no less than a “litmus test for patriotism” — becoming the top-grossing animated title ever. To get there, the sequel to writer-director Jiaozi’s 2019 Ne Zha has outpaced 2025’s top Hollywood movie, the Disney “live action” remake of Lilo & Stitch, by more than a billion dollars. To put that achievement in perspective, NZ2 has pulled in more money than 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, becoming not just the only film besides Avatar: The Way of Water to surpass $2 billion worldwide since COVID times but the fifth-most successful movie of all time.
Moreover, now that in the U.S. A24 is theatrically releasing a dubbed English-language version of Ne Zha 2 , the folkloric fantasy is within about $50 million of toppling Titanic for the No. 4 all-time box-office spot. A Mandarin-language, non-A24 version of NZ2 arrived in North American theaters in February, grossing a healthy $20.8 million in part thanks to Chinese American community groups block-booking tickets to theater screenings as a kind of affirmation of Chinese animation and cultural pride. But given A24’s abiding clout with the Letterboxd set as indie filmdom’s most commercial platform for emerging cinematic voices, the Ne Zha 2 dub will in all likelihood reach levels of cultural penetration beyond the Chinese diaspora.
But it’s hardly a no-brainer that NZ2 should have wound up at A24. Studio home to the Best Picture Oscar winners Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All at Once, as well as modestly budgeted commercial breakthroughs like Civil War and Talk to Me, the New York–based company has put out precisely zero other animated movies during its 13-years as an art-house purveyor. And beyond releasing the 2014 Hong Kong American co-production Revenge of the Green Dragons (which Vulture called a “Chinese American Goodfellas”), A24 has side-stepped the Middle Kingdom altogether.
A24 declined to comment for this story. The movie’s foreign distributor, China Media Capital — a Chinese state-backed conglomerate with ties to government interests — is based in Beijing and could not immediately be reached for comment. But according to two sources close to Ne Zha 2 who spoke to Vulture on background, the deal came together recently and quickly.
After the subtitled version’s relative overperformance, CMC became interested in rolling out a dubbed Ne Zha 2 and began contemplating Stateside partners with expertise marketing foreign films. A24, for its part, maintains ties with a variety of international broadcasters, studios, and platforms in support of its TV, film market, and film-festival slates.
Within A24, there was a recognition of Jiaozi — a.k.a. Yang Yu, the writer-director-producer whose feature filmography consists solely of the two Ne Zha films and who was unemployed and living off his parents’ largesse until the first installment broke through — as the kind of virtuosic yet previously overlooked auteur-in-the-making that the studio has often found success with. (The Daniels, Greta Gerwig, Ari Aster and Robert Eggers also fit this paradigm.)
As conversations between the studios proceeded, A24 pointed CMC toward its recent track record of rereleasing older movies by acclaimed filmmakers — often in premium large formats like Imax — to surprisingly healthy box-office returns. Last year, the studio’s theatrical reissue of Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads documentary, Stop Making Sense, took in $5 million (exceeding the movie’s original box-office haul of $4.95 million), and in 2023, A24 rolled out an 8K restoration of Darren Aronofsky’s surrealist 1998 thriller, Pi, in Imax.
An accord was quickly struck (financial terms have not been publicly disclosed, including whether CMC or A24 is covering the costs of prints and advertising). And in early July, the Hollywood trades announced A24 had reached a deal to bring a dubbed version of Ne Zha 2 back to theaters this week featuring the vocalizations of Michelle Yeoh, the Malaysia-born Hong Kong action star of Everything Everywhere All at Once, A24’s highest-grossing hit.
According to our sources, A24’s objective is not just to generate repeat ticket sales among the Chinese audiences who turned out for the subtitled version. Opening on 2,100 screens across North America, the Yeoh dub represents an opportunity for the studio to connect with a new viewership that may be curious about NZ2 both as a global phenomenon and a bravura work of animation.
Still, opening just months shy of the subtitled version receding from theaters and — as it so happens — over the same weekend that Netflix will showcase sing-along screenings of its anime-inspired, Korean-set smash KPop Demon Hunters, Ne Zha 2 is hardly guaranteed to replicate its Chinese success. “I would not expect a lot of traction among mainstream American audiences,” says box-office analyst David A. Gross, who publishes the FranchiseRe newsletter. “American animated movies are dubbed all over the world and overseas audiences make them their own. But this is still an exotic story and the first release already did well for a foreign film.”