Money · updated three times a day
Niu Lai box office, read straight from the ticketing dashboard
Niu Lai has taken ¥45.2M (≈ $6.7M) in mainland China as of . It made about ¥7,169 in its first nine days, nearly got pulled from cinemas, and then the internet found it. Every other English page quotes a number from the day it was written; this one reads the ticketing dashboard directly, three times a day.
Read from Maoyan Pro
refreshed three times a day · as of
Source: Maoyan Pro (猫眼专业版), the ticketing dashboard Chinese distributors and press both work from. Totals are cumulative gross in RMB; the dollar figure converts at that day's published rate. Mainland China only — there is no overseas release, so there is no overseas gross to add.
The run
The Niu Lai box office run, day by day
The shape of this is the whole story: nine days of nothing, one day of internet ridicule, and then a curve that no marketing department produced.
| Date | Cumulative | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 5–13 Aug | ~¥7,169 | 245 theatres, ~236 total admissions |
| 13 Aug | ¥921 that day | The low point |
| 14 Aug | — | Cut to 4 theatres; nearly pulled |
| 15 Aug | ~¥46,000 that day | Screenings jump 21 → 359 |
| 16 Aug | ~¥6.09M that day | Single-day peak |
| 17 Aug | >¥20M | ~US$2.8M |
| 18–19 Aug | ¥24.4M – ¥27M | Caixin / Epoch Times, different cutoffs |
| 20–22 Aug | ¥33M – ¥41.3M | ~US$4.9–5.7M, English-language reports |
| Now | ¥45.2M | live, from Maoyan Pro — refreshed three times a day |
Sources: Maoyan Pro (猫眼专业版), Beacon (灯塔专业版), Caixin, The Beijing News, IT Home, Epoch Times, Wikipedia. Ranges reflect snapshot timing, not disputed accounting.
Reading the numbers
Why every article gives a different Niu Lai box office figure
You will see ¥11.4M (BBC, 17 Aug), ¥17.1M (AP, 18 Aug), ¥26M (Bloomberg, 19 Aug) and “more than $4 million” (Reuters, 20 Aug) all presented as the total. None of them is wrong. They are timestamps on a curve that was adding millions of yuan a day, taken from two different tracking platforms that update at different moments.
Two things to keep straight when you compare figures:
- Gross vs. split. Chinese reporting often quotes 分账票房 (net after cinema and fund deductions, roughly 85% of gross) alongside the headline gross. Our live figure is gross.
- Currency date. A ¥33M total was reported as both $4.92M and $6.7M in the same week, because outlets used different exchange rates. We convert at that day's published rate and say so.
The budget numbers are a bigger mess than the box office ones — reported anywhere from $47 to $15,200 depending on the language. We checked all of them →
Records
Is this a world record?
The standing Guinness World Record for largest film budget-box office ratio is Paranormal Activity's 19,850% return, verified in 2014. Against the live total above, Niu Lai clears that at every budget figure anyone has published — but the answer reverses on the filmmakers' actual share at the only two budgets with any documentary basis, and nobody has verified the budget in the first place.
Method
Where this number comes from
A scheduled job requests the public Maoyan Pro dashboard feed every five minutes, reads the cumulative gross for Niu Lai (Maoyan movie ID 1455644), and caches it. Today's gross is derived from the change in that cumulative total since the last reading of the previous day, which is why it is labelled as an estimate on the first day of tracking and exact after that. Nothing here is scraped from another outlet's article, and nothing is hand-typed.
Limits, stated plainly: Maoyan publishes the cumulative total to the nearest ¥1,000 below ¥100M, so derived daily figures carry about ±¥2,000 of rounding. Dollar conversions move with the daily rate. If our feed ever fails, the page keeps showing the last confirmed number with its timestamp rather than a blank or a zero.
Questions
Common questions about the Niu Lai box office
How much has Niu Lai made?
¥45.2M (≈ $6.7M) as of , all of it in mainland China.
What is Niu Lai's box office collection?
Same figure — “collection” is the usual word for box office in South Asian coverage. There is no overseas theatrical release, so there is no separate overseas collection to add.
What did it make on opening day?
Almost nothing. About ¥7,169 across the first nine days combined, from roughly 236 admissions — its worst single day was ¥921 on 13 August.
Is Niu Lai profitable?
Almost certainly, by a very large multiple. But no audited budget has been published, and the reported costs range from $47 to $15,200, so treat any specific ROI figure with suspicion. Why the budget numbers don't agree →
Is it still in cinemas?
Yes. Some Chinese reports on 16–17 August said the run was ending; the live dashboard above shows it still playing, with 16,883 screenings today.