Niu Lai Box Office

Niu Lai’s reach on any given day was dictated by how many screens would carry it. Reports describe a spread of around 245 cinemas at one point, screenings collapsing to as few as 4 a day around 14 August when the film looked dead, and then a sharp rebound to roughly 359 sessions per day on 15 August as audiences demanded to see it. That volatility is the mechanical story behind the numbers: the moment exhibitors added capacity back, the gross could finally climb.

Even taking the most conservative reported gross, Niu Lai has out-earned its production cost by several thousand times over. The exact multiple depends on which day’s number and which budget estimate you use — which is precisely why we date every figure rather than freeze one headline total.

Around 17–18 August 2026 alone, different outlets reported the cumulative gross as roughly ¥11.4M, ¥14.9M, ¥17M, and ¥23.53M. Those figures aren’t errors — they’re the same live number captured at different moments and by different trackers while the film was still selling tickets. A movie mid-run doesn’t have a single true “total” until the run ends; it has a running tally that every source freezes at a slightly different instant. That is exactly why we attach an “as of” date to every figure on this page rather than crown one headline number.

The mechanics behind the climb are simple to state. A day’s take is admissions multiplied by ticket price, and admissions are capped by how many screenings exist. For nine days Niu Lai had almost no screenings and almost no admissions — hence ¥7,169. The hinge was the pre-sale surge around 15 August, when the total jumped from roughly ¥46,000 in pre-sales to past ¥100,000 and exhibitors scaled screenings from as few as four a day back up toward ~359. Once the seats existed, the curiosity that the “worse than AI” mockery created could finally convert into box office — and it did, thousands-fold over the budget.