Wang Zhong-Lei 王中磊
Huayi Brothers revenue falls 44%, while Stephen Chow's The Mermaid 2 is still in post-production
Poster for the first Mermaid film (2016). Source: official poster
Huayi Brothers – once China's biggest private film studio – has reported its results for the first nine months of 2026. Revenue for January–September came to just 120 million yuan, down 44.07% year on year. The net loss narrowed to 63 million yuan (114 million a year earlier). Third-quarter revenue also fell 44%, to 35 million yuan, with a loss of 26.6 million. The company attributes the decline to lower income from film and TV.
One line in the report will interest audiences: Stephen Chow's The Mermaid 2, in which Huayi has invested, "has entered post-production". The company has, however, been repeating exactly the same wording in its reports since 2023. The sequel has had a long and unlucky history: it was shot back in 2018, but its cast included Kris Wu and Show Lo, who were later caught up in major scandals, and according to Hong Kong news site HK01 their scenes – about a third of the film – had to be reshot. HK01 reports that the film only received its release permit in March 2026 and may not come out before 2028; there is no official date. The first The Mermaid grossed 3.39 billion yuan in China in 2016 and remained the highest-grossing film in Chinese history until 2017.
Huayi Brothers was founded by brothers Wang Zhongjun and Wang Zhonglei; the studio made its name with Feng Xiaogang's comedies – The Dream Factory, Big Shot's Funeral, Cell Phone, A World Without Thieves. It has posted a loss every year since 2018; after its 2025 report its shares began trading with an ST tag – a stock-exchange warning about the issuer's problems – and in April a court opened pre-restructuring proceedings. Now the studio is looking to AI for salvation: its TV label has launched the "H·AI Spark Program" of projects made with neural networks, and three such projects are already online.
