A Chinese film you've probably not heard of has just unseated Inside Out 2 as the biggest animated film ever

Sometimes a movie makes its arrival in China and catapults to major success but never has it happened to this degree before. As is the case in India, where Bollywood productions tend to arrive to huge followings that rarely translate beyond the country, the same now applies to the animated film Ne Zha 2, which has just become the highest-grossing animated film of all-time... and you probably have never heard of it.

As per Reuters, the film has garnered 12.3 billion yuan mostly solely at the Chinese box office (99% of all earnings come from mainland China), which is the equivalent of around $1.7 billion. This means that despite Inside Out 2 becoming a major sensation last summer, growing to become the biggest animated film ever at the time, and also the eighth highest-grossing film to date, it has already lost those records.

As it stands, Ne Zha 2 has taken each of these records for its own, and clearly it has no intention of slowing down. The big question is how far can this film go, as it has basically not made a penny beyond China or even made a ripple in markets beyond the Asian country, but if it did, could it add hundreds of millions more to its tally? Only time will tell.