Young deity morphs into box-office champion

Marking significant progress, the first Ne Zha installment enlisted over 1,600 animators from 60 companies. After five years of preparation and production, including two years polishing the script, the sequel brought together over 4,000 artists from 138 companies, creating 1,900 special shots that account for nearly 80 percent of its 2,400 shots.

Yang, born in Luzhou, Sichuan province in 1980, initially pursued a medical education at the West China School of Pharmacy at Sichuan University. However, he shifted his focus to animation during his junior year upon discovering his passion for art.

A year after graduating, Yang left his job at an advertising company to concentrate on artistic endeavors, relying on his mother's modest pension for financial support for over three years.

In 2008, Yang completed his directorial debut See Through, a 16-minute short film that garnered multiple awards, propelling him to the attention of Coloroom Pictures, the animation division of Beijing Enlight Media, a major studio known for some of the country's biggest projects like director Zhang Yimou's upcoming sci-fi film Three-Body Problem, based on the Hugo Award-winning novel by Liu Cixin.

Yang recalls that the enthusiasm from fans for Ne Zha, the franchise's first film that unexpectedly soared as a dark horse and earned over 5 billion yuan in 2019, gave him the precious opportunity to produce the sequel, which he cherished by assuming it would be his "final work".

"The second film carries such heavy expectations, which is a burden. At the same time, it serves as the motivation that drives us forward," says Yang in the television interview for the China Movie Channel.

In a promotional documentary unveiling the behind-the-scenes stories, an employee at Chengdu Kekedou Animation Film and Television, where Yang is based to lead the core team of the Ne Zha franchise, reveals an interesting fact: Yang occasionally ran from the first floor to the fourth for exercise as the director worried that if he fell ill, it would significantly impact the project.