Terrible film that earned $1,400 in 10 days goes viral for its hilarious reviews — earns $2.5 million

Some movies struggle to attract an audience. Niu Lai, a low-budget Chinese animated film, had the opposite problem — people couldn't stop talking about how bad it was! The 3D-animated movie, created over five years by director Xin Yumeng and his mother, Sun Lifan, barely earned a few thousand dollars in its first 10 days after its Aug. 5 release. But then something unexpected happened. As viewers flooded the movie with sarcastic reviews for its crude CGI and bizarre pacing, more and more people became curious. This ultimately prompted them to head to the cinemas, making Niu Lai an overnight hit, as reported by Wtop News on 18 August 2026. 

Five years in obscurity

The story began about five years ago when Yumeng and his mother Lifan decided to create something from scratch. After some brainstorming, the pair came up with the story of a timid young calf navigating a coming-of-age journey with family support. Soon, they began working on the animation with nothing but rudimentary digital tools. Obviously, because of all this, the output wasn't going to be up to the modern animation standard, and unsurprisingly, it wasn't. To make matters worse, the promotional efforts were basically non-existent. The pair only relied on black-and-white hand-drawn sketches with warnings such as "Come on over if you’re into the bizarre" and "No refunds" written on them. 

A dismal debut turned into success

All these things combined to make the recipe for disaster. That is because, after the release on 5 August, in the first ten days, the movie barely made over a thousand dollars, or $1,480 to be precise. But that changed drastically after the clips of the production's rough CGI started doing the rounds on the internet. Shortly after, on the review hub Douban, people began roasting the movie with sarcastic reviews. "Unbelievably terrible and eye-opening," one of them read. After this, it was only a matter of time before the film turned into meme material. Someone dubbed it "a must-watch for Chinese stock market investors" because the title phonetically mirrored a common market blessing. 

Pranks acted as fuel

The online fun then snowballed into real ticket sales as people began daring one another to sit through the movie. "My initial intention has always been to play pranks on my friends. If a friend asks me what I think about the movie, I’d say good and recommend them to watch it," Du Mingxi, a college student from Shanghai, said. He explained how younger audiences loved to spread memes comparing it to the viral six-seven trend in the United States. That being said, powered by this ironic word of mouth, Niu Lai's earnings skyrocketed, with the movie earning roughly $1.2 million in a single day. Meanwhile, its total box office receipts rose to a staggering $2.5 million. 

So bad that it's good

There's actually research behind the strange appeal of terrible entertainment. To put this to the test, Amit Bhattacharjee, an associate professor of marketing in the Leeds School of Business, decided to conduct a study. He performed a series of experiments and consistently found people choosing the worst options or titles available over the mediocre ones. "With entertainment, there's something appealing about the worst available option that makes people want to check it out," he said. 

Just want to have fun

That being said, people in the comments stood by the hype, suggesting they would've done the same in the comments of a post by CNN reviewing the movie in China published on 18 August 2026. Adrian Martinez wrote, "Sometimes you go to the movies for the movie, other times you go just to have a good time. I would have brought my kids, and we probably would have giggled the whole time through!" Meanwhile, Takashi Achung suggested, "Movies are for entertainment. If people enjoy and laugh while watching, the movie has achieved its purpose."

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