American entertainment company Netflix has acquired its first online drama series produced on the Chinese mainland.
The U.S.-based entertainment giant unveiled a deal on Thursday with Youku Tudou, the flagship streaming video service of Jack Ma's Alibaba Group, for worldwide rights outside of China to ”Day and Night,” a 32-episode detective drama series.
Netflix plans to make the series available in all of the 190-plus countries and regions where it is active.
Directed by Wang Wei and starring Pan Yueming, “Day and Night” generated more than four billion views on Youku Tudou since its domestic online premiere on August 30, 2017.
Netflix has been unable to launch its own services within the massive entertainment market in the Chinese mainland because of Beijing's restrictions on foreign-owned media channels in the country.
Instead, the company has turned to licensing deals in both directions. Netflix sold the local streaming rights to a batch of its originals to Beijing-based video service iQiyi in April.
