Disney / Pixar

'Coco'

After writing so many articles over so many years bemoaning Pixar’s perennial failures in the People’s Republic of China, it gives me great pleasure to write these words: Pixar has finally delivered a number one smash hit to the Middle Kingdom.

On Sunday, Coco will surpass the coveted 1 billion RMB box office threshold ($152 million at current exchange rates), making it the 14th picture, and only the second animated one, to reach that threshold in 2017.

And by Monday, Coco will overtake Universal/Illumination Entertainment’s Despicable Me 3 1.03 billion RMB / $152.6 million to become this year’s highest-grossing animated feature film in the territory.

That will put it behind only Disney’s hit Zootopia as China’s second-biggest animated hit of all-time. Zootopia earned 1.53 billion RMB, or $234 million, in its 2015 release.

Despite its long record of misses, misfires, and flops in the Middle Kingdom, which include this past summer’s Cars 3, a disappointment at just $19 million in receipts from Chinese multiplexes, Pixar finally has scored the success it deserves there.

That success has come quite unexpectedly in the form of Coco. The story about a young Mexican boy who visits his dead ancestors in his quest to pursue his dream seemed unlikely to do much business in China. In fact, Pixar's corporate parent Disney is said to have been reluctant to submit the picture to China's film authorities for distribution.

But the shared cultural value of reverence for one's ancestors—where Mexico has its Day of the Dead holiday, China has its Tomb Sweeping Day—was a big part of Coco's appeal for Chinese moviegoers. They have rewarded the picture with an extremely leggy run, one that has just been extended for an additional 30 days by China's film czars.