A woman walks past movie posters at a movie theater in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2025. As of 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, China's 2025 box office revenue had surpassed 50 billion yuan (about 7.08 billion U.S. dollars), according to the China Film Administration. (Photo by Su Yang/Xinhua)

China's annual animated film box office has surpassed 25 billion yuan ($3.5 billion), marking the highest full-year total ever recorded for the genre in the country, China Media Group reported on Sunday.

This sizeable consumption scale is jointly underpinned by both domestic and international films.

Chinese experts noted that the sizeable consumption scale, driven jointly by domestic and international titles, reflects a representative emerging consumption trend. The nation's cultural consumption market is increasingly characterized by the coexistence, competition and integration of homegrown intellectual property (IP) and global franchises - a pattern rooted in the country's long-standing path of economic opening-up.

Among the milestone box office performances, Ne Zha 2 topped the rankings with 15.45 billion yuan, followed by Zootopia 2 at 3.78 billion yuan and Little Monsters of Langlang Mountain at 1.72 billion yuan, read the report.
 
In 2025, China's film market continued to demonstrate strong momentum, creating fresh commercial opportunities for the global film industry. 
The US animated film Zootopia 2, currently screening in China, has surpassed the $1-billion mark in global box office revenue, with nearly half of its earnings coming from the Chinese market - significantly exceeding its takings in North America and ranking first worldwide so far, according to the CMG report.

The film's success in China has become the latest testament to the nation's box office potential and cultural openness. CMG's report cited US film industry insiders as saying that the Chinese market has become a core engine of growth for the global film industry.

As of Thursday, Zootopia 2 had attracted 91.06 million views on the Chinese mainland, surpassing the previous record of 86.81 million set by Avengers: Endgame, according to another CMG report.

Notably, multiple overseas media outlets have noted that the Chinese market has become one of this film's most important sources of global box office revenue.

Bian Yongzu, a senior researcher at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times on Sunday that the rise of China's cultural IPs does not imply the exclusion of overseas franchises. Foreign cultural products have played an important role in meeting domestic demand for cultural content and fostering market maturity, while homegrown IPs, in their growth process, have continuously drawn on international experience to upgrade their creativity, design and operating models.

"In this process, overseas cultural brands have also attached growing importance to the Chinese market, not only for its vast consumption potential but increasingly by incorporating Chinese elements and market feedback into their own product innovation," Bian said, adding that this two-way interaction has become an important reflection of China's expanding economic scale and rising cultural influence.

China's 2025 box office revenue exceeded 50 billion yuan ($7.09 billion) at 2:30 pm on December 13, surpassing the 2024 full-year total by 7.5 billion yuan, according to the China Film Administration.