Chinese New Year movies have always followed the cruel rule that the winner takes all, and it’s hard for the tail end of the line to get a taste of the soup, as evidenced by the explosive start of Ne Zha 2.
On its ninth day of release, Ne Zha 2 officially surpassed Changjin Lake’s 5.77 billion to become the top grossing film of all time. With the current trend, it’s not unlikely that it will be the first movie in history to break the 10 billion dollar mark.
Source Ne Zha 2 Official Blog
While Nezha 2 has been killing it in the theaters, its appeal outside the theaters is also not to be underestimated.
The next stop for many moviegoers after watching the movie is to buy Nezha peripherals. Sales of Nezha 2 peripherals are booming. As a partner of Ne Zha 2, Bubble Mart has seen a boom in sales.
On February 5, Bubble Mart’s customer service and offline store staff said that their Nezha’s Magic Boys of the Sea Born to Bond series of figures had sold out after only two days on the shelves. Due to the lack of stock, the store has removed the samples, and it is unclear when they will be restocked. Replenishment staff at the Bubble Mart kiosk also said that the blind boxes of Nezha figures were completely sold out.
Even netizens who were waiting for a small number of Nezha blind boxes to be restocked at Bubble Mart’s live broadcasting room had a hard time getting their wish. The hand speed is still not fast enough, a blink of an eye seconds gone. A fan who was planted after watching the movie complained.
Two years ago, Bubble Mart, which was judged by the market to be in a tidal wave, and whose IP was collapsing because of the blind boxes, is now relying on Ne Zha to stage a commercial comeback. This is a microcosm of the strongest Spring Festival season in history, and a major off-camera attraction.
Ne Zha is a new favorite of brands
A 3-year-old boy, Mr. Tens of billions of dollars at the box office.
People thought of Ne Zha’s fire, but they didn’t expect it to be so hot.
In fact, before the start of the Spring Festival season, the high box office reputation and IP influence accumulated by God of Fear Part 1 made it the most popular movie among brands, and because of this, God of Fear Part 2 Battle of Xiqi became the most popular Spring Festival movie in terms of business cooperation. The film has 13 licensed brands, 11 derivative brands and 27 strategic brands.
In comparison, the explosion of Nezha 2’s neighborhood is also well documented.
Nezha 1, released in 2019, was the No. 1 animated movie at the box office with 5 billion dollars. The movie’s peripherals were a hot topic at that time.
Thanks to the success of Nezha 1, the collaboration with many brands for Nezha 2 has already set the stage for the movie’s success even before its release.
In the end credits of Nezha 2, 12 consumer brands were directly featured, nine of which were derivative product partnerships. In the end credits of Nezha 2, the list of brands announced in the movie is 12, 9 of which are derivatives, compared to the 6 brands announced in the first movie, such as KFC, Farmer’s Spring and Lafon.
Source Ne Zha: The Descent of Nezha, End Credits Screenshot
Mengniu, as the first customized advertising company for Ne Zha 2, was the first to collaborate with the movie, launching a children’s organic milk gift box and an extra film co-branded with Ne Zha 2.
Source Mengniu’s official blog
Honor Mobile also collaborated with Ne Zha 2 and became the official partner of the movie.
Great Wall Motor’s tank brand has also recently revealed its partnership with Nezha 2, in a bid to get a piece of Nezha’s traffic.
As the sequel to the famous animation IP, Ne Zha 2 has been a box office hit, and its peripheral products have been enjoying a glut of popularity.
Bubble Mart’s aforementioned Nezha’s Magic Boys of the Sea Born Together series of figures in a blind box featured a hidden version of Nezha’s O-Ping, which has become a coveted item by fans, with its unique design and scarcity driving up its price on the secondary market.
Source: Bubble Mate Official Blog
In addition to hand puppet blind boxes, the movie’s popcorn bucket has also become a popular peripheral. Jin Yi Cinema launched the Flying Pig Popcorn Bucket with a unique shape. Many viewers queued up in the theater to buy this popcorn bucket in order to own it, and even on second-hand trading platforms, the price of this popcorn bucket was speculated to several times the original price.
In addition, Ne Zha 2 also launched a collector’s edition of collector’s cards in collaboration with the Card Collector’s Club.
The public’s love for Nezha has obviously turned into real money. On the online channel, Bubble Mart’s Tmall flagship store has sold over 30,000 Nezha figures in a blind box, and the link has been taken down. Bubble Mart’s WeChat app shows that the product is sold out, and is in the process of being replenished, with shipments expected to begin on May 20, 2025, according to Bubble Mart’s WeChat app. On the Taobao crowdfunding platform, Nezha’s official peripheral crowdfunding project was exceptionally hot, with a target amount of only 100,000 yuan, but ultimately raised more than 11.83 million yuan, with a high degree of completion of 11,834, and the number of transactions exceeded 280,000 pens.
Source: Taobao
Even Bandai’s Nezha 1 action figure, which is related to Nezha 2, has seen its price soar from RMB 100 to over RMB 200, doubling the price of the director’s signature poster from five years ago to RMB 300.
On second-hand trading platforms, prices of Nezha 2 peripheral products have risen even higher. A number of popular items in the blind box have already commanded a premium, with the price of the Nezha and Ao Beng combination rising to $180 and $200, and the hidden Ao Beng version of Nezha commanding more than $300.
It is certain that the 3-year-old Nezha has become a well-deserved money-sucking king in and out of the Chinese New Year.
Bubble Mart’s commercial surprise
Once the IP flywheel is activated, the commercial potential expands like a snowball. It is not only the product that rolls into the market, but also the dominance of cultural symbols.
The sales figures of Bubble Mart’s joint-named products with Nezha 2 are undoubtedly a remarkable report card. In just a few days, sales of the Born to be Tied series of blind boxes exceeded tens of millions of dollars, and the number of units sold reached a staggering hundreds of thousands.
Those who are good at war seek the potential, not to blame the people, so they can choose the people and let the potential.
It is precisely by seizing the strong market potential of Nezha 2 and acting in accordance with the trend that Bubble Mart has achieved great commercial success.
While the development of traditional film and TV derivatives often lags behind the popularity of the content, Bubble Mart chose a more radical path by launching its products at the same time as the movie’s release, which directly transformed the movie-going mood into the impulse to consume.
On January 30th, the first day of the movie, Bubble Mart launched the Born to be Tied series of handcrafts in a blind box, and on January 31st, the handcrafts went on sale in offline stores. This initiative was like pouring a bucket of oil on the flames of the movie, instantly igniting the market’s enthusiasm.
In this regard, Bubble Mart said, “Nezha’s Magic Child Haunts the Sea is a very high-quality IP, and the development of this co-branded product took one and a half years, and while pursuing the quality of the product, it was synchronized with the movie, not only restoring the classic scenes of the movie, but also making a lot of secondary design through in-depth communication with the copyright holder about the movie.
It’s hard to say how much luck is involved in this, but it does conform to Bubble Mart’s logic of relying on the strong to create a hit.
Looking back at its past cooperation with many popular IP cases, such as Disney Hello Kitty, the original God, Conan, the King of Thieves, and so on, every cooperation can produce dazzling sparks, bringing new vitality and growth momentum for the brand.
However, compared to Bubble Mart’s previous products, the out-of-stock situation of the Ne Zha co-branded product clearly exceeded Bubble Mart’s expectations.
For example, sales of the classic MOLLY Constellation Series blind box reached 5 million RMB within a month of its launch, while the Born to Bond Series hand puppet blind box easily surpassed that figure in just a few days, demonstrating the explosive power of its sales.
Compared to other similar products, the Born To Be Tied Series Blind Box also performed well. In the trendy toy market, the average blind box is considered to have done well if it generates more than $1 million in sales in the first week of its launch, but the Born to Be Tied blind box exceeded $5 million in sales on the first day of its launch, which is well above the market average.
For a long time, Bubble Mart has been criticized for the lack of a key core in its IP, and there is still room for improvement in the excavation of core values such as storytelling and cultural connotations.
However, the cultural vitality of Nezha is self-evident. Like Disney’s cultural tension, the value tension in the Feudal Souls culture has already reshaped the force of breaking down the boundaries of Nezha’s IP, and the battleground for business is no longer the shelves, but rather the sense of cultural identity in the hearts of every consumer.
When the bond between Nezha and Ao Beng extends from the screen to the dolls holding hands in the blind box, the emotional projection of consumers is materialized and the path of IP realization is redefined.
This is also the underlying logic of cultural consumption: from owning commodities to possessing symbols, and from functional satisfaction to emotional belonging. The end game of this surprise attack may have already laid the foundation for Bubble Mart to become the wave maker in the new consumer era.
The Alarmist Moment in Chinese Cinema
If there is no road ahead, I will make one. If heaven’s justice is against it, I will reverse it.
This is a line from Ne Zha 2, and it’s a perfect illustration of the fearlessness of youth.
From the official launch of the first domestic 3A game Black Myth Wukong in August last year, to Deepseek’s appearance in this year’s Spring Festival and Nezha 2’s explosion, the three post-80s Feng Ji, Liang Wenfeng, and Dumpling created Chinese miracles in their respective fields and took center stage one after the other.
The biggest feeling I get from this is that innovation seems to have taken root and blossomed in domestic soil overnight.
If Deepseek was a demonstration of China’s technological hardcore, the explosion of the black myth of Goku and Nezha 2’s No. 1 ranking at China’s box office are not only digital revelry, but also a collective resonance of cultural self-confidence.
In the case of Ne Zha 2, the special effects shots are the bones, but what really gets the audience’s blood pumping is the cultural genes flowing underneath the bones.
What struck me so strongly about this movie was its textual ambition. If the previous film, Nezha 1, asked where I come from, the sequel goes straight to the heart of existentialism, the question of who I am. A modern deconstruction of a traditional mythological story, the sequel addresses the spiritual dilemmas of today’s youth.
Source Ne Zha 2 Trailer
Nezha’s final choice between the world’s rules and his own true self – that he is a devil – is not only a rebellion against the false order of the Immortal Class, but also an ultimate affirmation of his individual values.
In a sense, Nezha’s rebellion is not only a challenge to the Mandate of Heaven, but also a collective declaration to the Chinese animation movie industry. In the credits of Ne Zha 2, there are a number of familiar animation production companies that have participated in the production of animated films such as Deep Sea, Great Sage Returns, Great Protector of the Sea, and Xiong Zhi Miao. According to the studio, the five-year production process of Nezha 2 was not a closed-door process, but more like an open and progressive national animation Olympic village.
Nezha 2’s rise to the top of the charts proves that China’s movie market is extremely resilient, and that even in the midst of a capital winter, high-quality content can still light a fire in the hearts of millions of people.
As director Dumpling said, every living character is a drop of water in a wave, and there is no room for laziness. The audience’s glasses are bright, recognize whether or not serious, a glance can be seen.
For Nezha 2, what we see is not only the success of a movie, but also the awakening of an industry that has gone from manufacturing to manufacturing, from following to leading.
While Nezha is making trouble in the sea, Chinese cinema is breaking through. Each wave is a tribute to the stars and the sea.
Arranged by Huang Jiajun Reviewed by Huang Jiajun
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