At the Zootopia 2 premiere in Beijing last week, Walt Disney Animation Studios creative director Jared Bush was faced with a wall filled with letters from people all over China, all writing about what the original 2016 animated film meant to them.
They emphasized the optimism of bunny cop Judy Hopps and how they wanted to emulate her sunny outlook. They cited the unlikely friendship between Judy and her partner in crime, a fox named Nick Wilde, as hope that they could get along with different family members. It was a spectacle that Bush had never seen at any other premiere.
“This is more than just a story,” said Bush, who wrote and directed “Zootopia 2” with Byron Howard. “Most of the time, these characters helped people through difficult times in their lives. They love these characters very much.”
To this day, the original Zootopia ranks as China's highest-grossing Hollywood animated film, with total box office receipts of $236 million. Marketing ahead of the new film included promotions involving 10 brands, as well as screenings across the country, including Shenzhen, Chengdu and Beijing.
But the Chinese market for American-produced films has changed dramatically over the years, leading to questions about whether “Zootopia,” which hits theaters Wednesday, and its loyal fans can overcome the more difficult situation American films face there today.
Once considered a prime and lucrative location for big Hollywood blockbusters, the country now has a more developed local film industry that is edging out strong competitors. The crumbling geopolitical relationship between the US and China hasn't helped either, nor has the growing trend of younger audiences watching short-form content on their phones.
“It's important to the industry that both 'Zootopia' and 'Avatar' work,” said Andrew Cripps, head of theatrical distribution at Walt Disney Studios, referring to James Cameron's upcoming film “Avatar: Fire and Ashes.” “The industry as a whole needs some success at the end of the year and I think this will be a huge sign of confidence in the market.”
China was once considered a goldmine for certain films, namely big studio films that could get their government's approval for release.
A decade ago, Hollywood films regularly grossed more than $100 million at the Chinese box office, with major blockbusters such as 2015's “Furious 7” and 2014's “Transformers: Age of Extinction” each grossing $300 million. Some films with softer domestic debuts can expect China to outperform them at the box office, such as 2016's “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter,” which grossed nearly $160 million in China alone and just $26.8 million in the U.S. and Canada.
The domestic Chinese film business saw a significant slowdown in box office growth in 2016. As a result, revenue from imported films – mostly from the US, such as Universal Pictures' “Warcraft” and Disney-owned Marvel Studios' “Captain America: Civil War” – increased by 10.9%, said Ying Zhu, author of “Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Biggest Film Market.”
At that point, those foreign films accounted for 41.7% of the total market share, up from 38.4% in 2015, she wrote in an email. To help boost earnings later in the year, Chinese regulators even relaxed a so-called cutoff for imported films in December that had traditionally been reserved for local films.
Zootopia opened in China with just $22 million at the box office, but momentum picked up in the weeks that followed. While the U.S. film typically screened in China for four weeks, Chinese regulators made an exception and added two extra weeks, said Bush, who co-directed and co-wrote the 2016 film.
“Zootopia was a real surprise for us in China,” he said during a video call from Beijing during the film's promotional tour. “We didn’t know it would become such a phenomenon here.”
Known in China as “Crazy Animal Town,” Bush said the film's dynamic between leads Nick and Judy and their flawed but caring relationship appealed to Chinese audiences, as did the backstory of Judy's move from a small country town to a major metropolis. Animated films have also been popular in the market for a long time.
Following the success of the film, Disney built the Zootopia theme park at Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in 2023 and is the only such area at any Disney park. The studio recently held the film's Shanghai premiere at a themed venue, where crowds of fans (both there and in Beijing) dressed up as characters from the film, including lesser-known ones like the shrew Fru Fru and Officer Clauhauser, the pop culture-obsessed cheetah.
But after 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, China has turned away from Hollywood films, especially as its political relations with the United States deteriorated.
Earlier this year, China planned reduce the number of Hollywood films allowed into the countryamid tariff tensions with the US. At the same time, China's domestic film industry has matured, leading to increased box office receipts for locally produced films. A notable success was the animated hit Ne Zha 2, which earned nearly $2.2 billion worldwide, $1.8 billion of which came from China.
Like the US, the Chinese film market has also been hit by the rise of short-form content and the growing popularity of watching entertainment on phones and tablets, keeping moviegoers at home.
All this meant that American films became less reliable. The highest-grossing American film in China this year was Universal's “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” which brought in $79 million, a far cry from the huge revenues some American films once made. The last Disney film to release in China and earn more than $100 million was 2024's Alien: Romulus.
But there are still niches that appeal to Chinese audiences, including family films, big special effects blockbusters and animated franchises. Cripps said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the film's reception in China due to the recognition of the franchise and the Shanghai themed location.
“Given what's happened over the last two to three years, it's hard to get too excited until you see the actual data,” he said. “But it’s certainly nice to delve into it.”
