China's animated film 'Nezha' has raked in 4.2 billion yuan (about 590 million U.S. dollars) at the box office in 27 days since its premiere. Box office tracker Maoyan expects the film's final ticket sales to reach 4.7 billion yuan (about 670 million U.S. dollars).

Beijing-based Enlight Media has produced many animated blockbusters before, but the spectacular success of its "Nezha" is expected to provide a major impetus for the company and the domestic movie sector as a whole.

Founder of Shanghai WL Production Han Xiaofei said Nezha's 3D production took his crew more than two months, a good deal longer than have had to put in on other animated films, and that they were just one of the production teams involved in the project. Most of those teams were domestic firms.

"Almost all the work on domestically produced animated films is now done in China, with only a minor part done by foreign firms. Some of the Nezha's productions were done overseas, but this was just outsourcing. China's animation techniques are now actually much better than those of countries that we used to lag behind," said Han. 

"The production took 16 hundred people and three years in total. We end up outsourcing parts of the work to 70 different teams. I can get emotional, even talking about it. Because it's so hard to coordinate among 16 hundred people," said Yi Qiao, general manager of Colorroom Pictures.

China's improved animation production has led to many recent successes – Monkey King, and Big Fish & Begonia, among others. And behind them, all is one major entertainment company – Enlight Media. In 2015, Enlight Media set up a firm called Coloroom Pictures, to focus only on producing animated films.

Industry experts say one good business reason for this is that the costs of producing animated films are much lower than films with famous actors. Nezha works for free. And putting more money into production rather than paying more for actors doesn't hurt box office earnings these days.

"Audiences nowadays are very mature. They don't go to cinemas just to see superstars, but rather pay more attention to storylines and investment in production quality," Qi Wei, deputy professor of Shanghai Film Academy at Shanghai University.

Story-telling is just as important. Director Yang Yu said he initially wanted to tell the story of Nezha more maturely so that the adults could also love it. 

Yang continued: "Good stories always fit the value systems of their own time. I believe the audiences have evolved, they are thinking in different ways compared with before. So we are making a good movie for that crowd."

The animation sector in China is consolidating in recent years. Small studios are coming together to accelerate the industrialization of film production.

Animated films are just one part of Enlight Media's extensive business. Nezha's success did pull up the company's stock price somewhat, but the impact of the film could be much more than that. Experts are saying the movie has become a phenomenon that will play a significant role in the development of China's film industry.

Qi added: "Nezha proves that China's film industry is now adjusting its structure, coming to a "New Normal." In other words, capital is not just chasing popular topics or stars but is rather investing in producers who are really making films. I think it's a great direction."

Despite Nezha's success, however, it's still a fact that half of China's domestically made cartoon movies have made no more than 10 million yuan, just a small fraction of Nezha's takings so far. China's animation producers still have a long way to go to build on the success of the little hero.