Online video streamer Youku purchases film rights from Warner Bros.This will allow the Chinese based video provider to show the Leonardo Di Caprio hit move ‘Inception’ one of the highest grossing movies of 2010, for five yuan (75 cents) on Youku Premium service, according to an AFP report.
The premium service allows viewers access to the latest films, TV series and concerts but without the nuisance of ads in between, as shown for free on their mainstream site.
Youku.com, which was founded in 2006, have also licensed content from other broadcasting houses, seeking to differentiate themselves from illegitimate content providers in a nation renowned for its thriving piracy industry.
“Through building long-term partnerships with copyright holders and communicating with our media partners, Youku Premium is creating a whole new way for people to find and watch the content they want, when they want it,” Youku founder and chief executive, Victor Koo, said.
The Chinese company made its debut US stock market last month and was the strongest New York Stock Exchange Initial Public Offering in more than five years, according to AFP report, highlighting the lucrative industry on-demand content has now become.
“Since we launched the paid service last year we’ve discovered there was plenty of demand from our customers for movie content but there was a bottleneck in the payment solutions. Now we’ve sorted that out and hope that this is a beginning for something new and exciting,” Koo told The Hollywood Reporter.
This deal is the latest move by Hollywood to get in on the online video streaming act, as viewers increasingly turn to online to view content.
No details of the value of the deal for Warnes Bros have been released.
According to Beijing based iResearch, the streaming site accounted for 259 million visitors and held a 40 percent share of all online videos viewed by its Chinese audience in September last.
