Two Best Actresses and Ne Zha 2

At the end of my post about Cardi B earlier today, I mentioned that she was at Demna’s final Balenciaga collection, which was the big ticket show at Paris Fashion Week on Wednesday. Michelle Yeoh and Nicole Kidman are longtime friends of the house and they too showed up to support. 

Michelle’s appearance coincides with an announcement involving her coming out of Hollywood today. You’ll recall, back in February I wrote about Ne Zha 2 which was shocking Hollywood, even though they were trying to ignore it. They couldn’t, though, because Ne Zha 2 is now the highest grossing animated film of all time, surpassing Inside Out 2 – by a wide margin (like $500 million). People in China were going to see it over and over again. A month later, in March, Sarah elaborated on the remarkable impact of Ne Zha 2, considering that 99% of its box office was homegrown. As she said, “Hollywood needs the rest of the world to make a billion-dollar hit, China doesn’t.”

For years now Hollywood has been trying to get that Chinese money. Now China is trying to get some Hollywood money because an English language version of Ne Zha 2 is being released in the west in August, and Michelle Yeoh will voice one of the characters. (The obvious guess is Ne Zha’s mother, who is a warrior.) CMC, the studio behind Ne Zha, is partnering with A24 on the film. This is a movie that most westerners have never heard of because when the original came out earlier this year it wasn’t widely available. CMC has already won, they don’t necessarily need this – they’ve already made over $2 billion from a film that cost only $80 million to make, so they’re good. Whatever comes in from the west from the English version is just a bonus on top of already 18 bonuses. If it does do well though, and Ne Zha 2 keeps adding to its gigantic bank, does that scare the sh-t out of the major Hollywood studios who’ve been trying to break into the Chinese market forever?