Just now, another piece of the puzzle on the map of Chengdu's digital cultural and creative industry has been settled - "Eight Immortals!" grossed over 2 billion yuan, ranking third in the history of Chinese domestic animation films. The first two films are "Ne Zha: The Demon Boy Roars in the Sea" and "Ne Zha: The Demon Boy Descends to the World".

The top three, all from the same city, are from Chengdu.

This can certainly be read as an industrial landmark. But a more interesting interpretation is hidden in the name 'Eight Immortals'. This film tells the story of eight mortals teaming up temporarily and eventually crossing the sea. In Chengdu, a similar narrative is happening, but there are more than eight people crossing the sea.

More than one 'Eight Immortals'

In Chengdu, 'Eight Immortals!' is not an isolated case.

At the top of the box office of Chinese animated films, the "Nezha" series of Coco Bean Animation consistently ranks first and second. The birthplace of the "Nezha" series is located in the Tianfu Changdao Digital Cultural and Creative Park in Chengdu, along with Chengdu Huameng Chengji Film and Television Culture Media Co., Ltd., the southwest headquarters of Oriental Dream Factory, the creator of "Eight Immortals!".

At present, Tianfu Changdao Digital Cultural and Creative Park has gathered 70 digital cultural and creative related enterprises, such as Qianniao Animation, Mojing Tianhe, Wanguang Culture, and Ai'er Square - these names are scattered in different buildings of the park, but in the production cycle of an animated feature film, they will bite each other in dozens of detailed links.

But Chengdu's "Eight Immortals" are not limited to animation.

Traveling north along Tianfu Avenue, inside Tencent Chengdu Building, in 2025, the daily active users of the Chinese version of "King of Glory" will exceed 139 million, with annual revenue exceeding 2 billion US dollars, and it will continue to dominate the global mobile game revenue chart for many years. In the first quarter of 2026, this product, which has been in operation for over ten years, once again set a "lifetime high" - the highest record in its lifecycle. A game that can run for ten years in a city and accelerate continuously is itself a sample of the industrial ecosystem.

To the south, in the Chengdu studio of Kingsoft World Games, the registered users of the Chinese version of the mobile game "Goose and Duck Kill" have exceeded 40 million within six months of its launch. After the release of the summer joint 86 version of "Journey to the West", its popularity has once again skyrocketed. More noteworthy is that Kingsoft World Games has entrusted the return of "Angry Birds" after a 17 year absence from China to the Chengdu team - with research and development in Chengdu, localization in Chengdu, and continuous product iteration in Chengdu. The statement made by Liu Yi, Vice President of Distribution at Kingsoft World Games, is very direct: in the future, new research and development projects in the social and party gaming fields will be invested in Chengdu.

These Chengdu "Eight Immortals" each have their own unique skills: Cocoa Bean Animation impresses global audiences with its top-notch production standards and narrative of "mortal heroes"; Jinshan Shiyou is known for its localized operation of international IP and the development of social party games for overseas expansion; Tencent Tianmei, on the other hand, has a decade long and enduring long-term operational capability, continuously generating billions of dollars in revenue. Together, they perfectly form the most complete cross-section of Chengdu's digital cultural and creative industry: from content creation to technology research and development, from long-term operations to international collaboration, each link has a decent sample.

And what supports these 'Eight Immortals' to demonstrate their abilities is a complete industrial rainforest. In 2025, the revenue of Chengdu's digital cultural and creative core industry will reach 413.97 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.3%, with nearly 900 enterprises above designated size. The policy support for the film and television industry at the provincial and municipal levels continues to increase. Sichuan Province has set up an annual budget of 300 million yuan as a special fund for provincial-level "support for major cultural and artistic projects and awards for high-quality products". At the same time, the "joint review of film and television dramas" mechanism has been implemented, and the approval process has changed from "running errands for enterprises" to "providing door-to-door services".

The real 'crossing the sea'

If the "Eight Immortals" only gather in Chengdu to showcase their abilities, then it is only the A-side of the story. The B-side is - they are collectively going out to sea.

The overseas journey of 'Eight Immortals!' has already begun. The film landed in markets such as Australia, New Zealand, North America, and the United Kingdom in mid August, and recently completed roadshows in five major cities in the United States, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. The English title 'All Wishes Come True' does not have a literal translation, but directly points out the fantasy theme of 'wishes come true', bringing fans around the world closer. In its first weekend in North America, it grossed $302000 in approximately 200 theaters, ranking third in the annual Chinese language film opening.

At the end of August, the 84th World Science Fiction Convention was held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Los Angeles. Chengdu has set up a booth for the "Panda Home IP Galaxy", showcasing 12 companies, 22 IPs, and products - including the animated movie "Eight Immortals!", the Chinese anime "Covering the Sky", the national game "King of Glory", the hot blooded mecha animation "Fist of Fate", Walulu AI smart toys, and AR smart glasses for movies and TV anime, smart hardware, trendy toy derivatives, and literary publishing. More than 2000 science fiction directors, screenwriters, and investors visited the venue, and many overseas fantasy fans wore Chengdu cultural and creative products and spontaneously shared them on social media.

Almost at the same time, at the Cologne International Game Show in Germany, the Chengdu Eclipse Edge team's "Annihilation Tide" won the "Most Epic" award. "King of Glory," "Monkey King Sword," and "One Autumn Sound: Royal Guards" appeared in groups, and overseas players lined up in front of the "Tianfu Game" booth.

On the eve of the "Double Festival", Chengdu enterprise Sichuan Time Interactive Technology Co., Ltd. globally launched the AIGC parent-child science popularization animated short drama "Seven Heroes on the Way Home Adventure". Overseas, with the help of its own overseas platform Freeshort, it has landed in multiple language versions on YouTube and TikTok, achieving synchronized global launch.

From a movie to a batch of IPs, from content going global to industry chain going global, this is the true 'Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea'.

There are more 'Eight Immortals'

While online screens are hot, offline ones are equally exciting. Along with the arrival of the 2 billion yuan box office, there is also the moment when Chengdu's digital cultural and creative industry gathers new content during the "Double Festival" period.

On September 23rd, Chengdu Science Fiction Museum. The 2026 Chengdu International Digital Cultural and Creative Season kicked off, with 29079 original works from 35 countries and regions completed "submission". On the same day, the theme activity of the national game "Catch the Goose" and "Goose in China" Chengdu Station was launched in Dujiangyan Irrigation Project - between a game and a world heritage, a virtual reality connection was completed with digital copyright as the link.

From September 29th to October 7th, Dongjiao Memory became an "IP planet". Over 40 "Made in Chengdu" IPs made a collective appearance: "Eight Immortals!", "Covering the Sky", "Goose and Duck Kill", "24 Solar Terms", with blind boxes, figurines, and cultural and creative peripherals lined up in a row. The immersive light and shadow experience of Harry Potter IP will also make its debut in China at Hongcang in Chenghua District. Dongjiao Memory also simultaneously launched the 2026 Chengdu International Digital Light and Shadow Art Festival, where excellent digital light and shadow works collide with industrial sites through architectural mapping and interactive installations.

And just before National Day, a new "Eight Immortals" had already appeared in advance. On September 10th, the game "King of Glory" developed by the original team of "King of Glory" was launched on all platforms, with over 70 million online reservations during the pre release stage, and immediately topped the iOS free list. This is not a simple new game - it is an IP that has been running for ten years, searching for its own expression for the next decade.

Looking ahead, the animated film "Zhao Zilong" produced in Chengdu started filming in January this year and is scheduled to be released in the summer of 2027. After the theatrical version of "Covering the Sky" by Xingyue Chenshi was launched in April, it had nearly 300 million online related views in four days, and both mobile games and theatrical movies are being promoted.

The Eight Immortals have never been a fixed group of eight people. It is a mobile list, consisting of batches of IPs grown from the same soil, each with different abilities, crossing the sea at different times.

Director Mou Zhengyang said about the original intention of creating "The Eight Immortals!": "He is a mortal, he is a mortal becoming immortal, and he must represent mortals." This sentence may also be suitable to describe the temperament of Chengdu's digital cultural and creative industry: not relying on innate resource endowments, but relying on a group of creators, a group of enterprises, a complete chain from content creation to global dissemination, biting each other in the distance of "a cup of coffee", "cultivating into immortals", and then crossing the sea separately.