Coronavirus: how straight-to-streaming film successes threaten cinemas in China

Because China has closed its cinemas amid the virus outbreak as part of steps to avoid large gatherings, some films are going straight to streaming platforms

With many Chinese people stuck at home, viewing figures are through the roof, and cinema owners are worried about their future

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China has closed its cinemas in response to the coronavirus outbreak, and some films are being released through streaming platforms instead, angering cinema chain owners. Photo: Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Published: 5:00pm, 11 Feb 2020Updated: 8:51pm, 12 Feb 2020

Streaming giant Netflix upended the film industry by making straight-to-streaming films. It has been shortening cinematic release windows or skipping them altogether before releasing films in a video-on-demand format.

This exasperates Hollywood studios and cinema chains across the West, which rely on long exclusive cinematic releases to attract the public.

Until last month China, the world’s second-largest film market, which generated over 60 billion yuan (US$8.6 billion) at the box office last year, had not been affected by the phenomenon. The Chinese public still flock to cinemas in their droves – there are over 60,000 cinema screens across the country.

However, the coronavirus outbreak forced production companies to cancel cinematic releases and push out new films on streaming platforms when the country’s cinemas were all ordered to close by the government as part of measures to curb the spread of the virus.

Xu Zheng in a still from Lost in Russia.

The first Chinese filmmaker to take the unprecedented step of releasing a film via streaming is Xu Zheng, who announced last month that his new film Lost in Russia, which cost 300 million yuan to make, would be made available for free streaming from the first day of Lunar New Year. He made the decision after it was dropped from cinemas together with six other blockbuster Lunar New Year films.