Low-budget Chinese animated film ‘Niu Lai’ becomes viral box office hit

A low-budget Chinese animated film has taken the box office by storm, surprising audiences and industry experts alike. Despite its basic character designs and abstract, unconventional plot, the movie has quickly become an online sensation.

Titled "Niu Lai," the film debuted on August 5, earning a modest 7,169 yuan in its first nine days. In a remarkable turn of events, its total box office tally has now soared past 2.5 million yuan.

The watershed came last Friday (Aug 14) after a social media topic about the film’s nine-day box office went viral. Many users were drawn to its unusually rough production and two-person creative team, with some describing the film as “worse than AI-generated animation” and hardly believing it was a Chinese animated film released in 2026.

The viral buzz piqued the curiosity of many, prompting audiences to see for themselves just how unconventional the film truly was.

The online attention also inspired a wave of content creation, with creative users inserting the film’s bull character into posters for classic movies. These playful edits further amplified "Niu Lai’s" social media presence, transforming it into an internet meme and a shared inside joke across platforms.

𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓