Animated feature Ne Zha 哪吒之魔童降世, which opened on Friday, broke the record for the highest opening day box office in China for an animated film, making it the first Chinese film to do so since The Lion King became the first Hollywood animated film screened in modern China in 1995. This comes four years after Monster Hunt became the first Chinese film to top the all-time Chinese box office charts since the market re-opened to foreign films in 1994.

The film made 138.5 million RMB on its opening day, edging it ahead of the previous top five – Despicable Me 3, The Minions, Kung Fu Panda 3, Doraemon: Treasure Island, and Your Name. Combined with 61.8 million RMB from test screenings over the past weekend, Ne Zha so far has 200 million RMB at the box office. To dethrone the current top overall box office, it would have to beat out Zootopia‘s 1.53 billion RMB. The highest for a Chinese animated film is fifth place Monkey King: Hero is Back with 956 million RMB. Given its incredible word of mouth, most people are expecting it to dethrone Monkey King at least, with Maoyan predicting it to dethrone Zooptopia (but Maoyan predictions fluctuates a lot).

Update: On Saturday the 26th, Ne Zha broke the record for highest single day box office for an animated film. On Sunday the 27th, Ne Zha broke the record for highest opening weekedn as well as highest weekly box office for an animated film.

Final trailer below (some spoilers), more promos here: