The team behind Niu Lai — yes, that cow movie everyone memed into a box office hit — just sat down with BuzzFeed for an exclusive chat about what they’re making next: 飞龙在天 (Fei Long Zai Tian, or Dragon in the Sky).
Niu Lai (The Cow Is Coming) dropped in China on 5 August with no marketing, publicity, or promotional assets whatsoever. The 86-minute animation reportedly opened as a disaster, then became the hit nobody planned. Now the same studio is already on the follow-up.
Those two are stills from the Niu Lai universe — the calf-and-skylark pairing that somehow broke the internet. In our exclusive interview, the studio said that accidental glow-up “opened the door” to 飞龙在天.
“After Niu Lai, people asked if we would disappear,” a spokesperson for Dalian Jingyuan Culture Film and Television Media told BuzzFeed. “No. We go to the sky.” They described 飞龙在天 as a dragon film about a creature that “refuses to stay on the ground” — less a polish pass on the cow movie, more a chaotic next chapter.
That accidental glow-up is exactly why they get to make this. Niu Lai has crept into the top five box office performances, sitting alongside some of the much bigger names taking over timelines.
Reports also suggest the amount has jumped to a staggering 8.2 million yuan (£900,000) as of Monday (17 August), with almost 300,000 admissions. Its total box office has reached 17.1 million yuan (£1.9 million). “The cow bought us the sky,” the studio told us, which is an extremely normal sentence to say out loud.
That said, not everyone wants sequel energy. State-owned Beijing News criticised cinemas for giving Niu Lai additional screenings, claiming they could risk "losing the trust" of audiences if they "continue to lower their standard". The 飞龙在天 team’s response, essentially: noted, still making the dragon movie.
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