Headlines From China: Spring Festival Holiday Pre-Sale Tops $46 Million

2021 Spring Festival Holiday Pre-Sale Tops $46 Million

As of February 5, the Spring Festival holiday box office pre-sale has reached 300 million yuan (46 million U.S. dollars). As the first such moviegoing period following the COVID-19 outbreak, the holiday starting on Feb. 11 is of great importance to China’s film industry and will be seen as a further hallmark of the recovery of the country’s box office market, one of the world’s largest. The comedy film “Detective Chinatown 3”, which was originally scheduled to release at last Spring Festival but postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic, tops the chart with a total box office pre-sale exceeding 200 million yuan. Read more China.org.cn

Future Tech China: Why Bytedance Is Taking Tencent to Court

On February 2, Douyin announced that it had formally filed a complaint in the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, suing Tencent for alleged monopoly. Specifically, Bytedance is seeking $14 million from Tencent over the blocking of Douyin links from within Tencent’s WeChat. Tencent, in true family feud fashion, says the allegations made by ByteDance are inaccurate and malicious, and that it plans to countersue, claiming that Bytedance violated user rights and is also blocking links to WeChat. Bytedance responded that it only blocks links to WeChat for certain content creators who post about healthcare and finance, arguing that these topics have high scam potential and could violate Bytedance’s guidelines. Read more Content Commerce Insider