The move was part of a new cooperation agreement that Huanxi unveiled Friday with ByteDance. The latter is paying RMB 630M to release certain new films and drama series on huanxi.com as well as ByteDance’s platforms., the comedy threequel from Xu Zheng, was the first movie under the deal.
With quarantines in place throughout the mainland, television has been the primary source of entertainment. The annual Spring Festival Gala on Friday drew a record number of viewers including 589M directly on TV and 1.12B online, china.org reported. After the weekend, however, Xinhua said that local authorites moved to reduce entertainment shows and cover the epidemic more closely with news programs and special reports. Millions of people have been watching livestreams of two temporary hospitals being built in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.