Yang Yu, director of "Ne Zha 2", an animated feature film that recently became China's all-time top-grossing film, said in an interview with China Media Group (CMG) that he makes every film as if it were his last.
By Thursday, “Ne Zha 2” had taken in more than 5.77 billion yuan (about 804.84 million U.S. dollars) in box office revenue, achieving the milestone in just eight days and five hours, according to ticketing platforms Maoyan and Beacon.
Surpassing 2021 war epic "The Battle at Lake Changjin", the film has become the highest-grossing film of all time in China.
The animated feature is the sequel to the 2019 animated blockbuster "Ne Zha", drawing inspiration from the tale of a mythological figure of the same name from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) novel "Fengshen Yanyi", or "The Investiture of the Gods".
The first "Ne Zha" generated an impressive 5 billion yuan in box office revenue, while also winning numerous accolades.
Yang said that making "Ne Zha 2" following the huge success of the first movie brought rising expectations from the audience and pushed the creative team to set high standards for the sequel.
"[The huge success of the prequel] gave us momentum, pressure and anxiety. The prequel was a big surprise to the audience, because they had no expectation for it, but 'Ne Zha 2' was produced amid rising expectation, which put us under pressure and kept pushing us forward. So, we set high standards for 'Ne Zha 2' and pushed ourselves to the limit," said Yang.
Noting that Ne Zha is anxious about his appearance, Yang said he introduced this feature purposely to present the character's inner struggle and avoid depicting a flat character.
"The human nature is complex. One will gradually start to doubt himself after being told 100 times he is wrong. Ne Zha is no exception and he will experience the same inner struggle as everyone does. We did this to avoid building a flat character," Yang said.
Yang said the rise of China's animation movie industry and the excellent works of his fellow filmmakers have been encouraging him to do his best in making masterpieces.
"The Chinese animation movie industry has produced many excellent works over recent years, and I think the trend does exit and I have no doubt about this. Over recent years, animation film makers have been encouraging their colleagues and have been witnessing the release of a slew of masterpieces, which also encouraged me to make more breakthroughs. I produce every film as if it were the last work in my lifetime, leaving no space for further improvement, but I will still try to make breakthroughs in my next work," said Yang.
I make every film as if it were my final work: "Ne Zha 2" director
