The Highest-Grossing Animated Movie in History Flops Hard at the American Box Office

While the summer box office season delivered a handful of blockbusters, no Hollywood movie was able to crack the coveted $1 billion mark this year besides Lilo & Stitch. The Disney live-action remake remains the highest-grossing English-language film of 2025, but it’s only the second-biggest movie of the year on the global charts. The top spot has remained with the Chinese animated blockbuster Ne Zha 2, which cracked the $2 billion mark during its theatrical run earlier this year. It was already the highest-grossing animated film in history before it was given a special English-dubbed re-release in domestic theaters last week. Somewhat surprisingly, the movie flopped hard, despite a big push from A24 in over 2,200 stateside locations.

Ne Zha 2 grossed only $1.5 million last weekend, finishing well outside the top 10. In fact, the original Chinese-language version did far better earlier this year, when it grossed over $7 million in its first weekend, and a total of $16 million during its entire run. Globally, Ne Zha 2 has made more than $2 billion, and is among the 10 highest-grossing films in box office history. It also unseated Disney’s Inside Out 2 from the number one spot mere months after the movie claimed it. Ne Zha 2 opened to excellent reviews during the lucrative Chinese New Year period in February, and is currently sitting at a 91% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. The film’s audience score on RT is even higher, at a near-perfect 98%.

By comparison, the Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon remakes are sitting at 92% and 97% audience scores. Over the last decade, the Chinese market has expanded exponentially. The last five years, in fact, have been particularly pivotal. Local audiences were trained to spend most of their money on Chinese movies, whose budgets kept increasing gradually. At the same time, viewership for Hollywood titles tanked to the point of being negligible. Over time, restrictions and sanctions led to a notable decrease in the number of foreign titles that were given a theatrical run in China, with only a few Hollywood movies breaking out in a meaningful way.

The Chinese Market Is No Longer Lucrative for Hollywood

Not too long ago, Hollywood studios were actively courting Chinese audiences with movies such as Transformers: Age of Extinction, Pacific Rim Uprising, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and xXx: Return of Xander Cage. But Chinese movies have struggled to cross over internationally, as can be seen from Ne Zha 2‘s limited appeal in America. By comparison, Hayao Miyazaki‘s The Boy and the Heron grossed nearly $50 million in domestic theaters a couple of years ago. You can watch Ne Zha 2 in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.