Unexpected success of 'Ne Zha' inspires director Yang Yu to next project

The success prompted him to establish an animation studio in Chengdu, Sichuan's provincial capital, but in the following six years, Yang struggled to get investors on board to finance a feature-length animation film. In 2014, Coloroom Pictures, a subsidiary of Beijing-based studio Enlight Media, reached out to him with finance for a film on the mythological figure Ne Zha.

Hiring around 1,600 members from over 20 animation companies, the film took five years for production, with emphasis on Ne Zha's new screen image-a boy with crooked teeth and dark circles around his eyes. It was a big change because over the past 40 years, Ne Zha had been played by handsome actors in TV dramas, movies and animation works, following the novel's original depiction.

"It would have been easy for our animators to paint a handsome face that the audience will like at first glance. But we wanted a breakthrough and wished to convey a message that a person should not be judged by his or her look. Instead, it's the internal personality that decides who you are," Yang explains.

Now with foreign netizens expressing their wish to watch the film, its overseas distribution, which is expected to have English subtitles, is also in negotiation.