Chinese animated blockbuster Ne Zha 2 finally has a release date for 37 territories across Europe, including the UK and Ireland.
UK-based, pan-European distributor Trinity CineAsia secured the theatrical rights to the film from Beijing Enlight Media and will release the film across Europe, including in Germany, France, Spain, UK, and Ireland.
Ne Zha 2 will open in the UK and Ireland on 21 March, followed by releases in other countries, said Trinity CineAsia.
“Rarely do you get a film that truly defines the era, shows again the unique power of cinema to move audiences, and makes an indelible mark on culture — this is Ne Zha 2,” Trinity CineAsia managing director Cedric Behrel told Deadline.
“After years spent cultivating the audience and building relationships with exhibitors, press and other stakeholders, as well as our online presence, Ne Zha 2 is a landmark for Trinity CineAsia in terms of reaching the far corners of the continent and developing our offering to a far larger audience.”
According to a report in Deadline, streaming rights for Ne Zha 2 are not part of this acquisition and are being negotiated separately.
A sequel to the 2019 fantasy adventure Ne Zha, the animated film follows a young boy born with unique powers who teams up with dragon prince Ao Bing to fight demons and save the very community that fears him.
The film series, written and directed by Jiaozi, is loosely based on a 16th-century novel, Investiture of the Gods, attributed to Xu Zhonglin. The film reportedly took over 4,000 artists across 138 animation companies to create, with more than 2,400 shots.
Released in China for the lunar new year on 29 January, Ne Zha 2 managed to captivate audiences of all ages and achieve significant success, boosted by the extended holiday period when many people returned home to celebrate. In the first week of its release alone, Ne Zha 2 made ¥4.84bn (£534 m) in China, setting the record for the most money made by a single film in the new year period.
Since then, it has gone on to break multiple records.
Ne Zha 2, made on a $80m (£61.9m) budget, is already the highest-grossing animated film in history making $2.06bn (£1.59bn) in China, followed by Inside Out 2, which made $1.7bn (£1.3bn) worldwide.
Overall, Ne Zha 2 ranks as the sixth among the highest-grossing films worldwide, overtaking Avengers: Infinity War, and sitting behind Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, Avatar: The Way Of Water, Titanic, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s also the first non-Hollywood film to gross over a billion.
Industry projections had put Ne Zha 2 firmly in place to beat 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the highest-grossing film in a single market, which the film managed to do in its second week.
On the film’s appeal in China, 29-year-old Zhou Jingwen told AFP: “I think it's different from traditional American animated films,” adding that it was “rich with Chinese mythological background,” and therefore likely to engage a foreign audience as well.
Ne Zha 2 opened in North America on 14 February, where it has made $18m, and has just begun its Southeast Asia rollout, premiering in Singapore and Malaysia over the previous week.
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