‘Ne Zha 2’ Smashes China Box Office Record

A rundown of the news making headlines in and around China over the past week:

‘Ne Zha 2’: Animated fantasy flick “Ne Zha 2,” continued to smash box office records after its Lunar New Year holiday release, becoming the first Chinese film to gross 10 billion yuan ($1.37 billion). The reception has sent the stock of the film’s producer Beijing Enlight Media Co. Ltd. sky high, up nearly threefold on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange since its Jan. 29 release. The strong turnout for the film was part of a broader uptick in consumer spending during the eight-day Lunar New Year break, which saw a record 9.51 billion yuan take at the box office from a new high of 187 million cinemagoers, according to the China Film Administration. “Ne Zha 2” is already China’s highest-ever grossing movie and the first globally to pass $1 billion in a single market. Whether the film can achieve similar success in Western markets will be answered in the coming weeks, as the sequel to 2019’s “Ne Zha” hit screens in Australia and New Zealand on Thursday and North America on Friday.