China’s TikTok is turning into a movie streaming platform
ByteDance’s Douyin now offers dozens of free films, including The Last Emperor, Farewell My Concubine and The Great Wall
TikTok is best known for short videos of lip-syncing teens and silly stunts. But it’s been trying to expand its offerings, which now include full-length feature films.
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TikTok owner ByteDance is letting Chinese users stream dozens of films in the local version of the popular video app, known as Douyin.
Among the films being offered are international titles like the Academy Award-winning The Last Emperor, acclaimed Cannes Film Festival darling Farewell My Concubine and the not-so-acclaimed 2016 action monster flick The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon.
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Even TV shows are following suit, with ByteDance making a deal to live stream a talk show called Comedy Weekend Online.
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The best news for users, though, is that all of this content is currently free, including the films recently added to Douyin. This could mean ByteDance is trying to grow its audience to eventually take on China’s Netflix-like platforms such as Alibaba’s iQiyi, Baidu’s Youku and Tencent Video.
(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba)
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