You can’t watch every Marvel movie on China’s top streaming platform anymore
iQiyi subscribers wanted to rewatch MCU films after Avengers: Endgame
It’s the start of a five-day long holiday and you just watched Avengers: Endgame. Wouldn’t it be great to have a marathon of every Marvel movie? Well, too bad for Chinese fans who signed up for the wrong streaming platform.
Subscribers of iQiyi recently discovered that Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Captain America and some other Marvel blockbusters have been missing from the site since May 1, the start of the Labor Day Golden Week holiday. Instead, viewers are redirected to rival Tencent Video.
Some fans are understandably furious that they’ll now need to pay for another service.
In the US, Disney -- owner of Marvel Entertainment -- is set to launch its own streaming service later this year. In the run-up to the launch of Disney+, the company is running out its contracts with other platforms like Netflix. In China, though, most American shows and films are licensed to iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku -- popular streaming platforms backed by Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba respectively.
(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)
So it’s perhaps no surprise that Tencent is boasting about its Marvel portfolio.
Unless you’re an iQiyi subscriber.
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