All Wishes Come True (八仙！): Who the Eight Immortals Really Are in Chinese Mythology

Quick answer: All Wishes Come True! (八仙！, Bāxiān!, literally "Eight Immortals!") is a 2026 Chinese animated fantasy-comedy from Pearl Studio, directed by Mou Zhengyang (牟正洋). It opened in mainland China on 18 July 2026, ran 144 minutes, and had grossed over ¥1.5 billion (roughly US$210 million+) by early August — one of the year's biggest domestic hits. It reimagines the Eight Immortals (八仙), a group of folk deities beloved in Chinese art and story for over a thousand years, as eight ordinary mortals who disguise themselves as immortals to break into a divine treasure vault — and end up earning godhood for real. The film has also drawn real criticism from Chinese critics for how loosely it treats that mythology. Here's the legend it's remixing.

---

The Eight Immortals, before the movie

The Eight Immortals (八仙, Bāxiān) are one of the most recognizable groups in Chinese folk religion — painted on temple ceilings, carved into New Year woodblock prints, and invoked at birthday and longevity celebrations for centuries. Unlike most deities in the Chinese pantheon, none of them started out divine. Each is a human — a beggar, a scholar, a musician, a court official — who reached immortality through Daoist cultivation, which is part of why they've stayed so beloved: they're proof that transcendence is available to anyone, not just the nobly born.

The traditional eight, with the names the film uses for its cast:

Immortal	Chinese	Traditional identity
Lü Dongbin	吕洞宾 (Lǚ Dòngbīn)	A Tang-dynasty scholar-swordsman; the most widely worshipped of the eight, patron of scholars and (per some traditions) barbers
Zhongli Quan	钟离权 (Zhōnglí Quán), also called Han Zhongli (汉钟离)	A Han-dynasty general turned Daoist master; often shown bare-bellied with a feather fan; traditionally Lü Dongbin's teacher
Li Tieguai (Iron-Crutch Li)	铁拐李 (Tiěguǎi Lǐ)	A lame beggar-immortal with an iron crutch and a gourd of medicine, patron of the sick and poor
Zhang Guolao	张果老 (Zhāng Guǒlǎo)	An eccentric elder famous for riding his mule backwards
He Xiangu	何仙姑 (Hé Xiāngū)	The only woman among the eight; a mortal girl who attained immortality and carries a lotus flower
Han Xiangzi	韩湘子 (Hán Xiāngzǐ)	A flute-playing immortal, in some tellings a nephew of the real Tang-dynasty poet Han Yu
Cao Guojiu	曹国舅 (Cáo Guójiù)	A former imperial in-law who renounced wealth and status for the Way, holding a pair of castanets
Lan Caihe	蓝采和 (Lán Cǎihé)	A gender-ambiguous wandering singer, often shown with a flower basket

Chinese-language coverage of the film's voice cast — including Sina, Tencent, and China.com reporting specifically on the Li Tieguai voice actor 果子哥哥 — confirms all eight traditional immortals above appear in the film. (You may see a different ninth name, "Fu Xing," listed in Li Tieguai's place in some English-language sources; that doesn't match the Chinese-language reporting on the actual voice cast, so treat it as unreliable.)

What the movie changes

According to Chinese Wikipedia and the film's own plot description, All Wishes Come True! rewinds the legend to before any of the eight had power: they're "flat-broke mortals with zero magic between them" who disguise themselves as the Eight Immortals to sneak into Penglai (蓬莱), the immortals' island realm, aiming to steal a treasure — in most retellings, the Jade Void Glazed Lantern (玉虚琉璃灯) that the Lü Dongbin character believes can save ordinary people from a coming catastrophe. The con works too well: mortals start actually worshipping them, and the disguise starts becoming real.

That's a real departure from tradition, and Chinese critics said so. The World of Chinese reported that reviewers accused the film of borrowing a "Hollywood-style heist formula" — comparisons to Ocean's Eleven were common — that "strips these characters of their original identities, relationships, and spiritual essence." Lü Dongbin, traditionally the most revered of the eight, becomes "a young, cunning swordsman and treasure thief." The film's antagonist, Yang Jian (杨戬) — better known as Erlang Shen (二郎神), the three-eyed warrior god who also leads the army that captures Sun Wukong in Journey to the West — was redesigned with "purple skin, dressed in metal armor, and wielding energy beams," which reviewers said looked more like Marvel's Thanos than the deity whose third eye traditionally "sees through deceptions, past and future." (We cover Erlang Shen's role in the other famous story he polices in The Real History Behind Black Myth: Wukong.)

None of that is a personal-conduct controversy — it's a debate about adaptation, the same one that follows almost every big-budget remix of scripture-adjacent folklore. Worth knowing before you watch, either way.

The idiom this legend gave Chinese

The Eight Immortals' best-known story isn't in the movie at all: 八仙过海，各显神通 (Bāxiān guò hǎi, gè xiǎn shén tōng) — "the Eight Immortals cross the sea, each showing their own magical power." In the traditional tale, the eight are invited to a banquet, and on the way home each one crosses the ocean using a different personal treasure — Lü Dongbin's sword, Zhang Guolao's mule, Lan Caihe's flower basket — rather than one shared method. It's the founding image of a very specific idea in Chinese: that a group succeeds not by everyone doing the same thing, but by each member using what they're actually good at.

各显神通 (gè xiǎn shén tōng) — "each shows their own power"

Meaning: Different people or teams each display their own distinct skills, especially when working toward a shared goal.

Origin: The phrase comes directly out of the Eight Immortals legend above — it's the second half of the full four-character-plus-four-character saying 八仙过海，各显神通, though 各显神通 circulates on its own as a complete idiom. 神通 (shéntōng) has Buddhist roots, originally referring to the supernatural abilities of an enlightened being, and the phrase generalized from "immortals showing off their individual magic" to any situation where people succeed by playing to their own strengths rather than copying each other.

Connection: All Wishes Come True! never stages the sea-crossing scene, but its whole premise runs on the same idea in reverse: eight mortals with no individual power have to fake having it, and the plot's tension comes from which of them actually discovers a real, distinct ability along the way. If you want to use the phrase correctly, save it for situations with real division of labor — a team where the coder codes, the designer designs, and nobody's replaceable, not just "everyone worked hard."

The gold-touching trick behind the film's other lead

The film's second protagonist, Zhongli Quan, has his own famous story attached — and it's specifically about the temptation the movie's heist plot toys with: getting rich by magic instead of merit.

点石成金 (diǎn shí chéng jīn) — "touch stone, turn it to gold"

Meaning: Transforming something worthless into something valuable through skill, wisdom, or (in the original legend) magic.

Origin: Chinese folklore tells this story two different ways, and both circulate widely enough that neither can be called "the" original. One version casts it as a test between Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin: Zhongli Quan offers to teach his student the technique of turning stone into gold. Lü Dongbin asks one question first: will the gold stay gold forever? Zhongli Quan admits it won't — after five hundred years, it will revert to stone. Lü Dongbin refuses the lesson on the spot: a trick that helps people for five hundred years but secretly cheats whoever holds the gold five hundred years later, he says, isn't worth learning. Zhongli Quan is said to have replied that his student's judgment already surpassed his own. The other version has Lü Dongbin himself performing the trick — turning a stone to gold for a poor, devoted worshipper who then refuses the gold and asks only for the finger that made it, at which point Lü Dongbin vanishes, delighted and unnerved in equal measure.

Connection: Either version lands on the same idea the film's own critics raised: magic that fakes value doesn't hold. All Wishes Come True!'s eight leads start out literally faking godhood for a treasure heist — 点石成金, but played straight instead of refused. Whether the film thinks that's a problem or the whole point is, per the reviews above, exactly what's under debate.

---

Related reading:

• The Real History Behind Black Myth: Wukong — From 《西游记》 to a Modern Sequel
• 各显神通 — full idiom page
• 点石成金 — full idiom page