A Tale of 2 Movies: Ne Zha 2 and Snow White

While Ne Zha 2 has triumphed at the box office, Snow White has languished. But can their contrasting fortunes really tell us something about Chinese and American soft power?

- Ho Ai Li Assistant Foreign Editor

I was at a mall recently when I saw posters of the Chinese animation movie Ne Zha 2 and Disney's live-action movie Snow White, side by side.

Both are ambitious projects but have enjoyed vastly different fortunes: Ne Zha 2, a massive box office hit, has become a film that many Chinese are only too keen to get behind, while Snow White, plagued by controversies, has sparked divisions in the US.

Snow White has tripped not once, but twice, at the box office. After a dismal debut in March, Snow White made another appearance on hundreds of US cinema screens over the Mother's Day weekend in May.

If Snow White was hoping that someday, her redemption would come, well it hasn't. While the movie is one of Disney's most expensive projects, its overall ticket sales of about US$205 million (S$263 million), domestic and overseas, have fallen short of its production and marketing costs.

In contrast, the firewheels keep on turning for Ne Zha 2, whose titular character is a feisty child deity from a 16th-century Chinese novel.

The movie has grossed US$2.18 billion as at May 5 to become China's top grossing movie of all time and No. 5 worldwide, after two Avatar movies, Avengers: Endgame and Titanic.

Ne Zha 2 is gearing up to spring another assault on cinemas in America, with an English-dubbed version in the works. As of now despite its merits — it would be a stretch to call it a global success as some US$2 billion of its earnings have come from China alone.

I watched Ne Zha 2 in a packed cinema hall on a weekday night during the March school holidays and Snow White in a hall with fewer than 10 people on a Sunday night in April.

It reminded me of a joke I saw online: "Snow White and the seven people who saw it."

MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL As China and the US exchanged tariff fire in April in an escalating trade war, some Chinese could not resist gloating about Ne Zha's triumph versus Snow White's woes.