Chinese streaming giant iQiyi moves into the movie business, announcing line-up of 33 films in the next three years
- iQiyi was prompted by the coronavirus pandemic to turn toward filmmaking to satisfy customer demand
- The platform plans to release 20 movies a year by 2023, and will have a staggered online pricing plan
Chinese streaming platform iQiyi has pledged to go beyond original TV dramas and reality TV to become a moviemaking powerhouse.
Their plan to invest heavily in filmmaking was unveiled at the iQiyi World Conference held last week in Shanghai, an annual event where iQiyi announced its new programme line-up of 33 movies, to be produced by iQiyi, and a new pricing plan which allots more users’ fees to movie producers.
Yang Xianghua, iQiyi’s president of membership and overseas business groups, says the pandemic prompted them to get into filmmaking last year. “The supply of good movies is decreasing. We must increase content production,” he says. “From April to November last year, there were no new cinematic releases. We just kept streaming online movies to satisfy audience demand.
“But there’s a big difference in quality and star cast between cinema and online-only movies. From January to April, of the new cinematic releases streamed on iQiyi, there were only nine movies with over 100 million yuan in box office takings, 60 per cent of the figure in 2019.”
With the over 300 million subscribers for mainland’s streaming platforms generating over 50 billion yuan a year, Yang says half of the subscribers’ fees are spent on movies. “From our users’ feedback, they are very hungry for good quality movies. The online movies we released during the pandemic could not satisfy them.”