China’s iQIYI Plans Buying Spree for U.S. Movies

BEIJING: The Chinese online video portal iQIYI has announced its plan to buy distribution rights for more than 1,000 U.S. movie titles in 2015, in a bid to satisfy the growing demand from its users for American content.

In June of this year, iQIYI subscribers watched more American movies than Chinese-language movies for the first time ever, according to the Baidu subsidiary. Views of American films also far surpassed those from other regions, including Korea and Europe. In September, Transformers 3 topped the list for online views with action pictures Killer Elite and Hunger Games coming in number two and three, respectively. Chinese viewers were also interested in science fiction and romance, with Secretary and Season of the Witch in the top 10 for online views.

"American movies are hugely popular in China," said Gong Yu, the CEO of iQIYI. "This summer U.S. films overtook Chinese and other international titles to become the most popular titles for paying viewers on iQIYI's platform."

Yang Xianghua, iQIYI's senior VP, said, "We hope Hollywood studios can shorten the window between U.S. release and online release in China to ensure that our users see Hollywood movies at the earliest opportunity. This would combat piracy and increase the revenues that Hollywood and other American movies can earn from online paying users.

"As iQIYI charges 5RMB for Chinese audiences to watch new releases online, the same cost for a pirated DVD, if American movies can appear online in a timely manner then Chinese users would prefer a good quality online version to a pirated DVD."