An old storyline with classic tensions is a public and financial success, proving everything old can be new again.

Beyond the expectations of industry insiders, a low-budget, homegrown, feature animation named Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf has become a runaway hit. The plot may not be the secret formula for success; it’s an ongoing battle of wits between a herd of goats and a couple of wolves with a relationship similar to that of Tom and Jerry. The wolves rack their brains to set traps for the goats, only to fall repeatedly into traps of their own making. Even the “bad guy” turns out to have his fans, for being so “human.” What is extraordinary is that with an investment of less than US $900,000, the movie did record-breaking box office, grossing US $12 million over the Spring Festival holiday season. This was far beyond the haul of another successful domestic animated movie, Storm Rider, which last year generated sales of US $4.8 million. Not stopping there, Goat’s creators marketed various products made in the images of the film’s leading characters that have proved popular with consumers, including daily-use items, toys and food. “We are aiming to build the goats and the wolves saga into an international brand in the near future,” says Li Ruigang, president of Shanghai Media Group (SMG), one of the movie’s investors.

Goats Make Wolves the Underdogs

“Generally speaking, most domestic feature animations only recoup a third of their original investment,” tells Chen Yingjie, a staffer in the Animation Department of the Film and TV Production Center of the SMG and producer of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf.

The stagnancy of the Chinese animation industry has been noted for 20 years. The joke is that the homemade cartoons are “goats” and the foreign ones “wolves.” For a long time, foreign cartoons and animations dominated the Chinese market, and the homemade variety turned out to be inviable amid the fierce competition. The movie Little Soldier Zhang Ga, an animation that took six years and RMB 12 million to produce, hasn’t been distributed yet because its investors lost confidence in it. The Warrior, Olympics Is in My Family, and even big-budget Thru the Moebius Strip made for RMB 100 million, all took big losses following release. Some of them had only been on the big screen for two or three days.