It’s been a remarkable year for international and independent animation titles, with the stand-out success of Oscar and Golden Globe-winning European feature Flow and the staggering box-office takeover of China’s Ne Zha 2.
Produced by Dream Well (Latvia), Take Five (Belgium) and Sacrebleu Productions (France), Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow was produced with dialog-free CG powered by open-source software Blender at a budget of $3.4 million. The film premieres at Cannes, kicking off a successful festival run and getting picked up for international sales by Charades, which subsequently sold it to U.S. distributors Sideshow and Janus Films (among many partners worldwide).
As of March 17, the ambitious project has grossed more than $36 million worldwide, a very healthy result for an independent animation. Flow‘s biggest markets include Mexico ($6.7M), France ($5.4M), North America ($4.6M), China ($2.7M after its third weekend), Latvia ($2.1M), Spain ($1.6M), Netherlands ($1.3M), Germany ($1M) and Brazil ($1M), plus $3.4M combined from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay.
Meanwhile, having rocketed to a series of box-office records, Coco Cartoon’s Chinese animated breakout Ne Zha 2 has officially surpassed $2 billion in worldwide box office — a first in animated film history. The sequel to mythological action-adventure Ne Zha (2019) was released in China for the Lunar New Year holiday and quickly rocketed up the charts, exceeding the lifetime gross of last year’s Pixar smash Inside Out 2 ($1.698B) to become the top-grossing animated feature of all time. The tale of the demon-busting demigod is also the highest-grossing single market release of all time.
With a running total of $2.089 billion, Ne Zha 2 is now climbing up the all-time chart for all films, attaching the No. 5 spot and surpassing Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). The film, based on the 16th century novel Investiture of the Gods and helmed by returning director Jiaozi (Yu Yang), is one of seven films to have surpassed $2B, and is chasing up behind Titanic ($2.26B), Avatar: The Way of Water ($2.32B), Avengers: Endgame ($2.78B) and Avatar ($2.93B). Inside Out 2 currently occupies the No. 9 spot on the overall list.
Ne Zha 2 has also been a smash for IMAX theaters, raking in $150M from the format worldwide, and surpassing the grosses of Interstellar, Avengers: Infinity War and Dune 2. With additional releases scheduled across Europe and Asia, the supernatural brawler is unlikely to rest on his laurels.
[Source: Variety]
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