alt Hacker NewsThe quality is quite high, but an observation is the direction they're taking these models correlates heavily to the usage demand of China vs the West. Specifically, they're immensely focused on t2v for action / high effect shots. There's one human reference shot in the entire release page, and that one doesn't focus on dialog at all.
For filmmakers I've talked to in the US, one of the biggest demands they have is v2v where they can carry over an actor's performance and insert it into whatever world they want. The movie market in China is somewhat different though - it's heavily oriented towards high action / high special effect movies. Consider this list of hollywood movies that have flopped in the US, but did great in China:
Warcraft (China: $225m box office, US: $47m)
Resident Evil (China: $159m, US: $27m)
xXx: Return of Xander Cage (China: $164m, US: $44m)
Pacific Rim: Uprising (China: $99m, US: $59m)
One read of this is that action movies / visual spectacles translate more universally than dialog-based movies. Another read is culturally China prefers that type of content in general. I suspect that for Bytedance, their focus is on action / special effects because thats where they see the demand.
Replies
hong kong films is the mirror image of hollywood and fantasy/action are a lot more popular than american.
But you're probably just blundering with value comparison since just per capita, your numbers arn't that' extreme, still the point stands.
I hear this a lot, but I observed this is no longer that simple.
Like Green Book (2018) made over US$70.7 million in China.
And one of the most popular films in 2021 was Hi, Mom (2021), made over US$785 million.
Obsession (2026) is another one that is doing amazing in China, absolutely beating high action films like Supergirl ($12 million and going vs less than $1 million)