Chinese streaming platforms will continue to create high-quality original content to strengthen the country’s entertainment industries which are recovering from the influence of the pandemic.
In the past year, many critically acclaimed films, including kung fu drama “Blind War” and epic film “Song of the Assassins” have been released on the Cloud Cinema channel of iQiyi.
The online premiere and distribution mode has turned out to be an effective supplement to cinematic screenings for movie buffs, particularly when a city was hit by the pandemic and had to shut down its cinemas for months.
According to Gong Yu, founder and chief executive officer of iQiyi, many filmmakers have benefited from the online releases. They are known to a big number of movie buffs on the Internet and have reaped online box office revenues.
iQiyi will also be involved in the production of projects with great market potential. Among the highly-expected films are the sports film “Ping Pong of China” and disaster film “Raid on the Lethal Zone.”
Mostly based on true historical events, these inspiring and original Chinese stories will also be told to the world through iQiyi’s international platform which has already reached audiences in 191 countries and regions in the world.
Another streaming company Youku is also engaged in developing high-quality tailor-made series in partnership with production companies. Such series will carefully define target audience, while the production and distribution will follow the demands of varied groups of viewers.
This mode is more efficient and economical.
Youku has already offered all its partners a special digital system to monitor and administer their projects, so as to have a good control of the project progress and budgets. Additionally, costume and property rental services are available to the crew of different projects, which will largely save their costs.
Earlier this year, a survey of China Youth Daily shows that 73.8 percent of people are more attracted to home-grown series, and 63.9 percent of people can see major improvements in the series’ cinematography and artistry.
