Bullets shoots BO record, fires up on line

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Ancillary News

Let The Bullets Fly (讓子彈飛, pictured), the runaway comedy success, has overtaken Aftershock to become the biggest Chinese-made film of all time. The film has also begun its online career, having been acquired by Chinese online video site Youku for its premium service.

The film is the second in only a matter of days to be announced by Youku and follows the site's acquisition of Inception, which also did huge theatrical business in China.

According to latest reports Bullets has now scored more than the RMB647 million ($98 million) than Aftershockachieved between July and September 2010.

Bullets achieved its total even quicker, having been release only on 16 December.

Youku says it has begun making the film available in an HD version to video-on demand customers from midnight yesterday (20 Jan 2011). Although the film will eventually be made available to Youku's monthly subscribers after the theatrical run is complete, if they want to watch it now they will have to pay the same RMB5 ($0.8) fee as VoD users. Theatrical tickets for the movie cost anywhere between RMB30 ($4.55) and RMB80 ($12.1).

China's online space has for a while been dominated by a combination of outright pirates and operators whose status has been rendered dubious by shifting regulation. In recent months the scene has been clarified as licenses have been issued and copyright protection has been better enforced.

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