Niulai, an animated film that had barely registered at the box office days after release, has suddenly become a talking point both inside and outside the crypto market. As online attention around the movie accelerated, a meme coin bearing the same name surged as well, at one point approaching a $30 million market cap.
The film debuted on Aug. 5. It drew notice for its rough visuals, unusual plot, discussion around how it cleared the so-called “dragon seal” screening process, and its meager early ticket sales. The source article says the crypto crowd focused on its abstract visual style, its natural meme appeal, and the rapid rise of the token tied to its name, while audiences outside crypto began treating the movie as a curiosity worth seeing in person.
A little-known release turns into an online phenomenon
The article traces the “Niulai” meme back to the film itself.
It mentions unverified online claims that the movie may have been linked to an effort to recover engineering payments, but provides no additional confirmed details beyond noting that the image source carried a watermark.
Niulai opened on Aug. 5 alongside summer titles including Odyssey and Welcome to Dragon Restaurant. With almost no resources behind it, its theatrical scheduling was minimal. First-day box office revenue came in at just 342 yuan.
By Aug. 14, its ninth day in release, total box office receipts were still only a little over 7,000 yuan. At that point, many people had not even heard of the film. Then its crude modeling, stiff animation, a heavily discussed voice line in which the calf character calls out for its mother, and the film’s ink-style official poster began circulating widely online. Curiosity did the rest.
The article says the story is set against a vast grassland backdrop and follows a calf named Niulai that meets a skylark and brings it into a dream world. In that dream, the skylark witnesses Niulai’s growth through love, persistence, courage, and sacrifice, eventually becoming a small warrior willing to shoulder responsibility and face life and death. The film is officially categorized as a parent-child animation.
Box office rises from a few thousand yuan to 2.531 million yuan
Maoyan Pro data cited in the article shows that as of 10:00 a.m. on Aug. 16, 2026, Niulai had generated 2.531 million yuan in cumulative box office revenue, with a projected final box office total of about 18.376 million yuan.
The source frames this as a sharp reversal. A film that had taken in only a little more than 7,000 yuan across roughly 10 days was suddenly seeing a single-day box office tally above 2 million yuan. The data included in the article indicates that online circulation materially changed the film’s visibility.
Official response on the “dragon seal” approval process
One of the biggest talking points around the movie has been how it obtained the “dragon seal,” the permit required for public theatrical release.
According to the article, the film’s official account responded publicly: 「（龙标审核）只审核内容合规，不审核电影好不好看、画面精不精致、剧情质量高低。质量平庸、低成本 Al 动画，只要内容合规，都可以顺利拿到公映许可证。」
It also said: 「这也是我们所有普通人，可以实现动漫梦的关键！」
From film character to meme symbol
As discussion spread, the subject moved beyond the film itself and into the territory of internet symbolism. The source says some people have called Niulai a Chinese version of Pepe, pointing to its anti-mainstream image and similarities in visual tone.
After clips and images reached overseas audiences, the article says they drew comments such as: 「泰酷辣，说实话」, 「第 1 秒就知道是烂片，结果最后有点喜欢上了」, and 「把它送到美国，加上英文配音，肯定会大火」.
The report also lists a range of derivative creations. Some users turned the calf character into absurdist meme graphics. Some rotated the movie’s promotional poster and paired it with candlestick charts so it resembled a price chart. Others remixed Niulai with Spider-Man and produced a poster titled Spider-Bull: Brand New Day. AI blogger CuiMao also released a new AI-generated video built around the theme of a delivery worker waiting for a stock market bull run.
At that stage, Niulai was no longer just a low-budget animated movie. It had become a meme object that people could edit, repost, reinterpret, and use as social currency.
The token launched on Aug. 14 and climbed fast
That attention was quickly mirrored on-chain.
The Niulai meme coin launched on Aug. 14. The article says trader Lana disclosed buying $99 worth of the token when its market cap was around $10,000.
By Aug. 15, the token’s market cap had broken above $12 million. In the article’s account, some positions originally worth about $100 had grown to more than $120,000.
By the day of publication, the meme coin had at one point climbed to nearly $30 million in market cap. The source described that move as another “3,000x miracle” compressed into three days.
Attention moved straight into price discovery
The source article presents several layers behind the Niulai narrative. On one level, it describes the film as a parent-child project that took five years and was made by a mother seeking to fulfill a child’s dream of making animation. On another, it says some viewers read it as a reaction against assembly-line film production and elite control over heroic cultural narratives. In a more direct market sense, the name itself carries obvious emotional weight in Chinese, invoking hopes for a bull market, rising prices, and memories of stronger economic periods.
Against that backdrop, the market reaction on-chain was immediate. Once Niulai shifted from a movie title to a meme symbol and then to a tradable token, attention was rapidly translated into price and market cap. The article closes by arguing that meme coins keep finding improbable ways to reward the earliest entrants.