Liu Minjian never thought that a herd of goats could be so lucrative. Liu, General Manager of the Qingchun Film World in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, is amazed at how popular the animated movie Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf was over the Spring Festival holiday. He even pondered how he could go about prolonging the screening.

"The box office earnings of the movie at our theater reached 740,000 yuan ($108,000) during the Spring Festival holiday, making it the most profitable we have ever screened in the same period of previous years," Liu said in an article in Hangzhou-based Today Morning Express newspaper. This record almost matches that of U.S. blockbuster Kungfu Panda in 2008, which took 1 million yuan ($147,000) in the theater.

Liu was not the only theater manager in China who hoped to continue screening Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf. According to distributors of the movie, when the end of the first run drew near, quite a lot of theaters across the country applied for a continuance. This attitude of theaters to a domestic animated product is rare in China.

Homemade miracle

How could an animated movie excite so many theater managers? The answer is simple. It makes money. With an investment of only 6 million yuan ($882,000), the movie has made a box office income of 80 million yuan ($11.8 million) during its first run, far beyond the haul of another successful domestic animated movie, Storm Rider, in 2008, which made 33 million yuan ($4.9 million).

It is estimated that the final box office earnings of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf will hit 100 million yuan ($14.7 million).

It was adapted from a 500-episode namesake TV series, which aired on nearly 50 TV stations nationwide. Without complicated plots or hi-tech special effects, the movie has charmed millions of Chinese youngsters using only simple stories about the battle of wits between a herd of goats and a couple of wolves.

Zhao Xiaochu, a 7-year-old girl, likes the movie very much. "The leading Pleasant Goat is very clever and tactful, and all the little goats live a happy life together," she said. Her mother, Pei Donghui, who watched the movie together with the little girl, also appreciates the movie, adding that her daughter really had a good time in theater. "The movie is light-hearted and humorous, which is very fit for children."

According to Beijing Youth Daily, a survey shows that Pleasant Goat and Grey Wolf, two major characters in the movie, are more popular than Mickey Mouse among Chinese children.

"It is the first time for a homemade animated TV series to be adapted into a full-length feature movie. We did this only because the TV series is so popular among children," said Chen Yingjie, producer of the movie.

According to Chen, the highest audience ratings of the TV series Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf once reached 17.3 percent. "Children knew the characters in the movie three years ago, which has laid a solid profit-making foundation for the movie," Chen said.

The movie uses some very young animators, who are also core members of the production team of the TV series. The average age of the designers and screenwriters is less than 25 years old.

From the initial ideas to produce such an animated TV series in 2003 to the finishing of the animated movie in 2008, Huang Weijian, 31, one of the screenwriters of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, spent five years on the project. He often jokes that he has grown up with Pleasant Goat.

"As we all are big boys or girls, we did not want to make a work focusing on education," said Huang in an article in China Youth Daily. "We hope to produce an entertaining product that can show traits of bravery, wit, love and friendship at the same time."

According to Huang, the stories mostly originated in the memories of designers from their school days.

Successful marketing

The success of the movie has triggered heated discussion. The majority of the audience and insiders in film circles believe the movie was successful because of its marketing strategy.

"It shows that a low-cost homemade animated product can also achieve huge box office success, as long as we can find a workable marketing strategy," said Lu Yongqiang, General Manager of Creative Power Entertaining, one of the presenters of the movie, in an article on the website zaobao.com.

Targeting children aged from 3 to 8 years, the movie premiered on January 16, the first day of winter vacation for schools in China.

Before the screening, the distributors launched a sweeping promotional campaign, including sending New Year cards to children in kindergartens and advertising on TV, radio and other media throughout the country. They also cooperated with fast food chains, such as McDonald's, to send millions of stuffed and plush toys made in the images of leading characters of the movie, a big change for Chinese animated products that were weak in promotion.

To attract an adult audience, the movie added some plots and lines that adults could relate to, most of which revolve around current social issues.

A namesake cartoon book series has also been published, which sold more than 1 million copies within three months after hitting the market.

A DVD of the movie has also been released. According to Shanghai Xinhui Disk Group, the distributor of the DVD, it has received orders worth more than 1 million yuan ($147,000).

On February 9, distributors of the movie announced that the movie's ticket price would be lowered countrywide to 5 yuan ($0.73), in order to enable more children to enjoy the story.

Such efforts paid off. It is very common to see parents going into theaters with their children to watch the movie during the Spring Festival period, one of the major reasons for the soaring box office earnings. Many parents also help their children collect the goat and wolf dolls or toys.

"I should say that we have invoked all kinds of market resources," said Wang Lei, Deputy Director of the Film and TV Series Producing Center of the Shanghai Media and Entertainment Group, one of the presenters of the movie.

Confidence in the industry

Analysts said that the biggest value of the movie is that it boosted the audience's confidence in domestic animated products.

For a long time, Chinese homemade animated products have not been well received in the market. Although domestic animation studio's capacity reaches 20,000-30,000 minutes a year, the market demand is only 5,000-6,000 minutes.

A survey done by the School of Journalism of the Shanghai-based Fudan University in the latter part of 2008 shows that 70 percent of respondents said that the biggest problem with homemade animated products was the lack of original stories. Another 63 percent of them said that the images in homemade animated products were not appealing, and 51 percent said that the characters were boring. Other weak points of homemade products are that they focus more on teaching than entertaining elements, and they pay less attention to dubbing, music or other details.

Since the 1990s, foreign animated products have dominated the Chinese market, which further restrained the development of the local animated industry. In an attempt to revive the industry, the Chinese Government had to adopt some safeguard measures in the past few years. But critics said that these measures could only have short-term impacts.

At the same time, analysts are optimistic about the profit-making potential of the animated industry of China. Statistics show that more than 2,000 TV channels throughout the country need 260,000 minutes of animated products every year. It is estimated that China needs at least 150,000 animators, compared with fewer than 10,000 today. The output value of the animated industry is expected to hit 79 million yuan ($11.6 million) in 2010.

The success of the Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf is indeed good news for China's animation industry and the audience alike. Guan Yadi, a film critic, said in an article in China Youth Daily that the success of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf has helped Chinese people know clearly what the animated industry is all about. "Maybe one day, Pleasant Goat and Grey Wolf would become the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck of China," he said.