Netflix’s Over the Moon praised in China but bigger box-office bomb than Disney’s Mulan

While both films feature Chinese stories and all-Asian casts, Over the Moon is being applauded for handing Chinese culture better than the live-action Mulan

The US-China co-production has received little attention in China, earning less than US$1 million at the box office before streaming on Tencent Video and iQiyi

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Netflix’s Over the Moon tells the story of a Chinese girl who builds a rocket to the Moon to prove that the Moon goddess Chang’e really exists. Image: Netflix

Published: 11:00am, 17 Nov 2020Updated: 12:16pm, 17 Nov 2020

A new animated film co-produced by a Chinese studio that tells the story of a Chinese goddess seems like the perfect recipe for becoming a hit in China. That did not happen, and now Over the Moon is drawing comparisons to Walt Disney Studios’ live-action Mulan remake as a film trying hard to impress Chinese audiences and falling short.

Reviews have been much kinder to Over the Moon, though, which was released globally on Netflix on October 23 and got a theatrical release in China on the same day. Viewers praised the film’s animation and its treatment of Chinese culture. However, the story failed to excite audiences and the film fizzled out at the cinema with just 5.72 million yuan (US$864,000) in its first three weeks, according to movie ticketing platform Maoyan.

Over the Moon tells the story of a Chinese girl in her early teens named Fei Fei. Remembering the story of the Moon goddess Chang’e told to her years earlier, she sets out to build a rocket to the Moon and prove the goddess really exists.

It was co-produced by Netflix and Pearl Studio, a Shanghai-based animation studio that previously worked with DreamWorks Animation on Kung Fu Panda 3 and Abominable. The film also garnered some early attention because of the star power behind it.

Former Disney animator Glen Keane, known for his character work on hit films like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, directed the film. It also has an all-Asian cast with big names such as John Cho, Sandra Oh, Ken Jeong and Hamilton’s Phillipa Soo, who voices Chang’e. Yet none of these actors are particularly well-known in China.