Since its release, Disney's animated "Zootopia 2" has set off a long-awaited movie viewing craze in the movie market. As of press time, "Zootopia 2" has been in theaters for 17 days, with more than 80 million moviegoers and a box office of 3.185 billion yuan in mainland China, ranking third on the box office list in mainland China in 2025.
Text | "BUG" column Xu Yuanlei
However, behind the popularity of the movie, the problem of piracy is prominent. Even though Xinhua News Agency recently published a commentary stating that "pirated filming is too rampant," pirated resources for "Zootopia 2" are still rampant on second-hand platforms such as Xianyu, and many sellers openly sell high-definition screen recording resources.
The "BUG" column found that the current price of these pirated resources has dropped to 0.01 yuan, and individual sellers have sold thousands of copies, most of which are shipped in the form of network disks. Some sellers said, "A penny of resource sharing is purely for the love of generating electricity."
In this regard, Xianyu customer service stated that it is recommended that users provide the reason for reporting, picture voucher and private chat authorization, and report on their own on the platform. Lawyers pointed out that if a platform is aware of piracy but fails to take proactive measures, it should bear joint liability for infringement with the infringer.
One-cent piracy is rampant, Xianyu customer service said to "report it yourself"
Recently, Xinhua News Agency published a commentary titled ""Crazy Stealing City"", pointing out that "Zootopia 2" has "too rampant stealing."
The commentary clearly pointed out that illegal photography seriously violated the Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China at the legal level and infringed upon the right holders' rights of reproduction, distribution and information network dissemination. It called for "increasing the crackdown on the piracy industry chain and cutting off the black hands of illegal photography at the source."
However, the outcry from the official media and the clear provisions of the law do not seem to be able to effectively curb the spread of piracy.
The "BUG" column noted that a large number of pirated resources for "Zootopia 2" can still be found by searching for relevant keywords on second-hand trading platforms such as Xianyu. These products are generally low-priced, ranging from 0.01 yuan to 4 yuan, and individual sellers have sold more than 7,000 copies. There are many words in the product description such as "high-definition quality", "downloadable and screen-casting", and "Chinese and English subtitles".
According to a pirated resource obtained by the "BUG" column, the video is a "gun version", that is, someone used a recording device to secretly record the entire screen in the theater. The video is about 99 minutes long, and is missing about 8 minutes of the ending subtitles compared to the feature film.
In fact, the piracy chaos of "Zootopia 2" is not an isolated case. Complete pirated resources appeared on the day after the release of "Nezha: The Devil in the Sea" during the Spring Festival this year, with more than 260,000 related piracy links. According to a special action to protect cinema movie copyrights in March this year, the complete piracy industry chain includes front-end "gunmen" using micro-devices to steal records, mid-end technology groups building websites and app distribution, and end-end online stores spreading through USB flash drives and social platforms.
As for the issue of "Zootopia 2" piracy, Xianyu officials have not responded as of press time. Xianyu customer service recommends that users provide the reason for reporting, picture voucher and private chat authorization, and report on their own on the platform. Customer service staff said that Xianyu has always prohibited users from publishing all kinds of illegal information, used various means to identify and delete illegal products and their variant words, and punished illegal users. However, there are still some criminals who use various "code words" to evade platform supervision in order to make profits. Xianyu will continue to improve its technical capabilities and strengthen audits.
A Xinhua News Agency commentary article mentioned that online platforms should establish a more proactive filtering system for infringing content and cannot allow algorithms to recommend infringing content. According to the "Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China" and the "Regulations on the Protection of the Right to Disseminate Information Networks", if an online platform fails to perform its audit obligations and facilitates the dissemination of piracy, it may be fined, suspended related businesses, closed websites and other penalties.
In this regard, Han Bin, a lawyer at the Bank of China (Guangzhou) Law Firm in Beijing, said, "Platforms are subject to formal review, but there are no relevant legal provisions on the form of review. Generally speaking, when the rights holder notifies the platform of piracy information, the platform can usually be exempted from liability as long as it fulfills its obligation to delete upon notification."
Han Bin said that according to Article 1197 of the Civil Code and Article 23 of the Regulations on the Protection of Information Network Communication Rights, if the Xianyu platform knows that the linked content is infringing but fails to disconnect the link, it shall bear joint liability for infringement. That is, if the platform is aware of piracy but fails to proactively take measures, it shall bear joint liability for infringement with the infringer. However, there is no clear definition of knowing knowledge and due knowledge in judicial practice, and the platform may be exempted from liability based on safe harbor rules.
Movie theaters are celebrating the New Year, and Disney is making a comeback in China
Behind the rampant piracy is the popularity of "Zootopia 2" at the box office and word of mouth. As of press time, the cumulative box office of "Zootopia 2" in mainland China has reached 3.185 billion yuan, ranking third in the 2025 box office list and the animation box office list in Chinese film history. AI predicts that the total box office may reach 3.846 billion yuan.
A theater manager said that although the "Zootopia" IP has been released for nearly 10 years, the audience base is still very solid and there is a lot of tap water. In mid-November, the promotional materials for "Zootopia 2" were completed in the cinema. On the first day of release, the theater he was responsible for arranged a total of 6 theaters to show "Zootopia 2". "A total of 6 halls were opened in the Golden Theater, and 4 halls were also opened at other times."
"It is difficult for our theaters to have audiences lining up to enter. We haven't seen so many people since the Spring Festival. Just like the Chinese New Year, we have now increased the number of morning shows." The theater manager also said that "Zootopia 2" will be followed by "Avatar: Fire and Ember". "Both movies are the 'hope of the whole village.' This year's box office mark of 50 billion in the Chinese film market is already beckoning."
On the other hand, the performance of "Zootopia 2" also gave Disney, which has been declining in China in recent years, a "turnaround".
In recent years, many of Disney's works have clearly failed to adapt to the Chinese market, and their box office performance has repeatedly failed to meet expectations. Take the 2024 global box office champion "Inside Out 2" as an example. Although its global box office is as high as about 1.7 billion US dollars, mainland China only contributed 47.4 million US dollars (about 340 million yuan), accounting for less than 3%; and "Moana 2" failed to break the 100 million yuan threshold in China, and the final box office only stayed at about 95 million yuan.
It can be seen from the box office data that since 2019, domestic animation has gradually broken the monopoly of Disney and Universal on the animation charts. In 2025, "Nezha: The Devil Boy in the Sea" set a new record for animated films in Chinese film history with a box office of 15.4 billion yuan.
Following the predecessor released in 2016, "Zootopia 2" was once again released simultaneously in China and the United States. In this regard, Chen Jin, data analyst of Beacon Professional Edition, said that the simultaneous release of "Zootopia 2" in China and the United States is on the one hand to allow domestic IP fans to watch the movie with "zero delay" and on the other hand, it can also coordinate with the global marketing of the film.
The popularity of "Zootopia 2" may have brought a rare recovery for Disney. But as mentioned above, copyright protection is always the invisible but vital lifeline. This is not only a dilemma that Disney and "Zootopia 2" need to face, but also a hurdle that the entire Chinese film industry must overcome.