03/09/2026

LYFE THURSDAY | SEPT 3, 2026

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Low-budget fever dream turns Chinese box office hit o Crudely animated ‘bad’ movie about baby cow stuns cinemas with viral success

A crudely animated, homemade movie about a baby cow has become China’s most unlikely box-office smash, generating merchandise and memes and a national conversation about the joyful rejection of slick marketing and artificial intelligence by a younger generation. Made on a shoestring budget and with hand-drawn posters and a reported cost in the thousands of dollars, The Bull Comes , or Niu Lai in Chinese, grossed the equivalent of more than US$4 million (RM16 million) as of Aug 20. In China’s daily box-office rankings, it placed immediately behind Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a Marvel Studios sequel that reportedly cost some US$225 million to produce. Niu Lai, which tells the story of a newborn calf, his mother and a leopard cub, flopped in its first week, grossing just over US$1,000, according to local media reports. Then, with a boost from social and local media, the movie’s wonky animation, awkward storytelling and discussion of its unlikely creators – an amateur animator and his supportive mother – made the movie a viral sensation. At a recent packed screening in Beijing, bursts of laughter rang out before the movie started. “I can’t believe the cinema is full!” one audience member shouted, triggering cheers and laughter from the crowd. “Other than envying how much money this piece of junk has made, I have no complaints,” said a popular movie blogger on Weibo, a social media platform. The embrace of the movie has become a kind of inside joke for the young, the blogger added. “And I say – let them laugh. There aren’t that many things left that we can joke about.” THE eras of The Odyssey and the Vikings happened about 2,000 years apart – so, how did a Viking longship end up with a starring role in this year’s blockbuster movie? Look to director Christopher Nolan and his obsession with bringing spectacle to life with real props, real scenes. But also credit a team of Norwegian shipwrights and sailors who built a vessel that speaks to history and Hollywood. With its tar-soaked rigging, creaking oak deck and 50 spruce oars, Draken Harald Harfagre is the largest modern replica of a Viking ship. It mattered little that it had to drop its Scandinavian roots for Greek mythology – the anachronism blended into the service of Nolan’s brand of realism. For the film, though, Draken had to be stripped of the dragon figurehead at its bow – typical of the Viking era, from the 8th to 11th centuries – as it sailed for the cameras in Greek, Italian and Scottish waters. “We found a Viking ship that had been built exactly according to those ancient specifications. And it was very much the whole shape and the rig that we needed to do a Bronze Age ship. “We took the crew and we put their crew all in our costumes. They

animation is heavily pixelated. “It’s not even a movie. To call it bad is an insult to bad movies,” said one reviewer on Weibo. Movie or not, it has become a cultural touchstone and sparked a frenzy of people trying to cash in on its unlikely appeal. There are Niu Lai toys, Niu Lai masked robots, social media memes and cosplays. Companies with the word “bull” in their names also saw an increase in their share prices recently, drawing an unusual warning from China’s central bank against meme stock investing. “Going to the movies for a bit of fun is harmless enough, but... pinning one’s hopes on the word ‘bull’ is not rationality – it is wishful thinking,” a journal run by the People’s Bank of China said recently. Aspiring animators hoping to repeat the low-budget flick’s success might also be out of luck. “These are usually low probability events: Hard to predict and impossible to replicate deliberately. “More often, they are driven by a swell of public emotion rather than the content itself. The content may simply serve as the spark that ignites,” said Liang Xia, an animation producer based in Shanghai. – Reuters handicraft instead of being a digital creation,” said Emanuel Persson, expedition director for Draken. All hands on deck On board, everyone played their part. “Damon was very nice and very good. Never complained. Every one of the actors was out for a long time and it was very cold and sometimes rough. “No complaints, nothing, never. So that was fantastic to see,” recalled the longship captain Bjorn Ahlander. With such a mixed crew on board, it was not always easy to row in perfect sync. “It’s very important that the hundred rowers coordinate because the oars are quite long and they will tangle with each other,” Hudson stressed. He recalled being thrown “a metre-and-a-half into the air”, along with his rowing partner, when the blade of their oar hit a wave head-on. The sweet memories from the shoot are in sharp contrast to those from neighbouring Sweden. Like Penelope waiting for Odysseus, the owners of another Viking ship used in the film had their patience tested: After the ship incurred damage during a shoot, they had to wait a year for compensation.

Due to the lack of official marketing material, cinemas are resorting to using hand drawn posters to advertise Niu Lai. – REUTERSPIC

‘Don’t tell me what to do’ The DIY project tapped into a kind of rebellious mood of the moment, said Remo Zhu, a Chinese director. “It’s a mood of... don’t tell me what to do, to watch or eat – I’ll decide that for myself.

It is a tale of friendship, courage and loss as the herd faces danger on its journey to find greener pastures. Spoiler: It also may – or may not – be a dream. The dialogue is slow. Action sequences are clunky. The

“In a packed cinema full of strangers, it becomes a genuinely interactive, immersive communal experience,” he said. The movie tells the story of a frail and exhausted newborn calf who struggles to stand up.

Viking longship in The Odyssey ? Just history colliding with Hollywood

Draken , the ship used in the The Odyssey , is docked outside Oslo Opera. – PICS FROM AFP

A visitor reads about the ship’s role in the movie.

the 12th century BCE. Rather than recreating a ship with computer-generated images, Nolan wanted a real one, capable of sailing on the open sea with flesh-and-blood men aboard. “Most of the scenes would be completely different if it wasn’t for us being there, doing the real thing with the real ship and the real crew in the real ocean and real weather. “I think the viewers can actually feel the genuine materials. I don’t know if you can really smell the tar, but you can tell it’s really genuine

got seasick and threw up over the rail. It blew back on me,” recalled sailor Trammell Hudson. “I thought that would be my big scene, because the Imax camera was very focused on him and me in the background dodging the debris. But I didn’t see that particular scene in the film,” he told AFP when the Draken and its crew made a recent visit to Oslo. Based on Homer’s epic, Nolan’s film retraces the hero Odysseus in a perilous journey to his home on the island of Ithaca after the Trojan War in

became part of the movie crew, as it were. And Odysseus’s guys, the actors, joined in with them and they figured out how to raise the sail, how to rig it, how to row, all of this stuff,” Nolan told US television last month. For months, the longship’s crew of seasoned sailors rubbed shoulders with Hollywood star Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus on-screen, and a host of professional actors. ‘Doing the real thing’ “There was one day where one of the actors who was sitting in front of me