BEIJING \u2013 A Chinese animated film that generated only about US$1,000 (S$1,280) in ticket sales in its first 10 days at theatres became a social media sensation after online ridicule helped propel its box-office revenue to a six-figure sum, according to local media reports.<\/p>\n
Niu Lai was one of the most-discussed topics online on Aug 15, with posts of clips showing what viewers described as poor animation quality and awkward storytelling.<\/p>\n
The flood of scorn helped turn the movie into an unlikely box-office phenomenon.<\/p>\n
Some social media users said they had bought tickets to judge the film for themselves, while cinemas increased screenings as discussion spread across Weibo and other platforms.<\/p>\n
The 86-minute budget animation, about a newborn calf and a skylark whose relationship develops over the course of an abstract dream sequence, has made more than 14.9 million yuan (S$2.8 million), The Guardian reported, citing figures from movie tracking site Mao Yan.<\/p>\n
It is now sitting alongside blockbusters such as The Odyssey<\/a> and Spider-Man: Brand New Day<\/a> in cinema revenue rankings, the media outlet added.<\/p>\n According to The Guardian, the movie was made by just two people over five years.<\/p>\n Its writers, directors, voice actors and producers are reported to be a mother-and-son team, Xin Yumeng and Sun Lifang.<\/p>\n The film\u2019s relative success illustrates the growing power of social media attention in driving consumer behaviour in China, even if the reaction is largely negative.<\/p>\n \u201cYou may regret it for 80 minutes if you watch it, but if you don\u2019t, you\u2019ll regret it for life,\u201d said one social media post about the film, as cited by the BBC. BLOOMBERG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIJING \u2013 A Chinese animated film that generated only about US$1,000 (S$1,280) in ticket sales in its first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-863336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}