Commercial film director Wong Jing has announced that he will cooperate with iQiyi for an upcoming sci-fi film, "iGirl," about a man who has a robot girlfriend, as reported by China Daily.
During Wong's announcement in Beijing on Tuesday, he revealed that the online film will be released on iQiyi in March.
Nowadays, it is not unusual for an online film to star someone like actor Ekin Cheng and have a 10 million yuan ($1.52 million) budget, especially given the booming film market.
However, when it was revealed that "iGirl" would only be available for the paying users of iQiyi, the industry and audiences were surprised that the online film was given such an investment.
China has never had a film tailored for the Internet with names and a budget this big.
The film will also be released in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and other markets using traditional channels like pay TV and theaters.
"China's Internet technology has matured enough to support a market that's just taking off," said Wong.
Both Wong and iQiyi believe that the country's online video viewers, who were once known for insisting on free content, have taken on new habits that make ventures like this possible.
According to a report by industry analyst iResearch and the China Internet Network Information Center, the online paid content industry was valued at almost 1.2 billion yuan by Sept. 2015, with iQiyi having 10 million paying users by December of the same year.
"We expect the film will bring more paying users for us," said Yang Xianghua, vice president of iQiyi. "Perhaps, the upcoming film will turn a new page for the industry. Online films will thus have higher quality."
Yang said that while a feature-length online film typically costs around 500,000 to 800,000 yuan in 2014, 20 percent of the films made in 2015 cost over 1 million yuan. He expects it to keep rising in 2016.
"Many previous online films were not careful with details. They usually restricted themselves to certain genres," said Li Yansong, head of iQiyi Pictures.
While the market was once dominated with certain genres, like horror and soft-core sex, both Yang and Li believe that the added investment will diversify the genre and allow the production of more mainstream products.
"For example, more special effects will be introduced," said Li. "That will allow genres like sci-fi to become popular."