What's Trending: So bad it became a hit? The Chinese movie people are paying to hate-watch

Your Way Home with Hongbin Jeong · Aug 20, 2026 · 17m

What happens when a movie becomes famous for being terrible? A low-budget Chinese animated film called Niu Lai opened with almost no marketing and just 236 tickets sold in its first 10 days. Then the internet got hold of it. Now, it has reportedly crossed 10 million yuan at the box office. But there’s more to the story than a 'so bad it’s good' movie. Niu Lai was made over five years by a director and his mother, who taught themselves filmmaking and worked on the entire 86-minute film themselves. On What's Trending, Hongbin Jeong, Nadiah Koh and Nazirul Asrar discuss why audiences…