In the Chinese mainland market, the hottest post-zero actor is definitely Yi Yangqianxi, who can be said to have both strength and box office appeal.
As the starring role of a movie for the first time, Yi Yangqianxi won major film heavyweight performance awards. The first film starring him "Young You" was also shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best International Film the following year.
Subsequently, Yi Yangqianxi successively launched film works such as "Send You a Little Red Flower", "Chinese Doctor", "Changjin Lake", "Shuimen Bridge of Changjin Lake" and "Miracle Stupid Child", each of which had a box office of more than 1 billion yuan, of which "Changjin Lake" broke the highest box office record in Chinese film history with a score of nearly 5.8 billion yuan and became the Chinese box office champion.
With these films, the cumulative total box office of Yi Yangqianxi's films quickly exceeded 10 billion yuan, making him the first post-zero actor in China to star in a film with a total box office of more than 10 billion.
In 2023, China's number one director Zhang Yimou filmed a historical suspense comedy "Manjiang Hong" for him, in which he and Shen Teng were listed as the double male protagonists.
After the film was released, it was at the beginning on a par with the sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth 2" starring Wu Jing. From the third day, it ascended to the throne of the championship. After the Spring Festival, the film's cumulative total box office exceeded 2.6 billion yuan, not only won the position of box office champion, but also allowed the cumulative total box office of the film starring Yi Yangqianxi to exceed 17 billion.
Among the young generation of Chinese actors, Yi Yangqianxi is really successful, and sometimes he is even regarded as a "benchmark", and there have been directors who want to make someone into a second Yi Yangqianxi, just like Wang Junkai, who belongs to the same group.
Because they belong to the same group at the beginning, and they are all young actors, there are always people who compare the two of them.
When filming the movie "Broken Bridge", director Li Yu once praised Wang Junkai, saying that he was "very hard-working, promising, and the improvised lines brought everyone a very shocking effect", and even said that Wang Junkai would become the second traffic star recognized by everyone after Yi Yangqianxi.
As an actor, Wang Junkai is indeed very hard working and dedicated, but his acting skills and box office appeal are still not small gaps compared with Yi Yangqianxi.
In recent years, Wang Junkai has also starred in some movies, but there are not many works that have created high box office. Among them, the highest box office, that is, "Ten Thousand Miles Home", which will be released on National Day in 2022, has a total box office of less than 1.6 billion yuan.
According to the film platform, the cumulative total box office of the film starring Wang Junkai is currently 3.726 billion, less than 4 billion, which is not a fraction of Yi Yangqianxi. So it is basically impossible for him to catch up with Yi Yangqianxi in terms of movie box office. And his acting skills also need to be honed, hoping to run into a better script.