The film, made by a mother and son over five years, has made 17.1m yuan in ticket sales.
18 Aug, 2026
What does it take to make a commercially successful film? A cast of A-list actors? A massive marketing budget? Cutting-edge technology? For Xin Yumeng and Sun Lifang, the answer was: five years, a mother-son bond and a lot of online trolling.
The duo are the writers, directors, voice actors and producers of Niu Lai (The Cow is Coming), a rather poorly animated film taking Chinese cinemas by storm.
The film, which follows a skylark witnessing a calf grow up to become a mighty warrior in a dream, is not good, in any sense of that word. In fact, its distributor was told not to release it because it was so bad — but he was a friend of Xin’s, so he did anyway.
For 10 days after its August 5 release, it performed exactly as everyone had said it would. The film made 7,700 yuan (Rs317,300) off of around 300 tickets nationwide.
Then, a miracle happened. Users on Chinese social media turned it into a meme and suddenly, everyone wanted to see what the fuss was about. “You may regret for 80 minutes if you watch it, but if you don’t, you’ll regret it for life,” one popular social media post about the film said.
In an extreme example of ‘no publicity is bad publicity’, the film has now made 14.1 million yuan (Rs704.6m) in sales, making it one of the summer’s high rollers.
The earnings place it alongside Hollywood giants such as The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day as well as local favourite Once Upon a Time in the Middle East.
Which is really saying something considering it didn’t even have posters and staff in some cinemas had to resort to drawing posters themselves — often with phrases like “Come on over if you’re into the bizarre” and “No refunds”.
As for the netizens out there spreading the word, they admit the film isn’t great, with one user on film review site Douban calling it “unbelievably terrible”.
Industry professionals had a similar view, with one telling The Guardian, Niu Lai was unique because it was “bad in every aspect imaginable, including the story, special effects and almost every element that a movie is expected to have”.
“Ironically, this is exactly what attracted audience curiosity,” he said.
But in a time dominated by AI, some viewers thought the film was the product of something uniquely human. Netizens shared clips praising Niu Lai’s “hand-crafted” visuals as “proof” that its creators did not use AI.
A user on Douban said, “In an era where AI is so popular, did the creative team choose a handcrafted, somewhat crude visual style to convey a sense of ‘returning to one’s true self?’”
