Time

Event

Reason

November 26, 2014

Set up a Japan branch shortly after Rui Chen joined.

1) On November 26, 2010, someone posted Bilibili’s link on a Japanese Forum called 2ch, Japanses users began to know about Bilibili.

2) Bilibili ambitiously entered the market in Japan when Rui Chen had only become a member of Bilibili for less than a month, this means that BiliBili wants to cooperate better with the copyright holders and service providers in Japan.

2014-2015

A company called “Bilibiliyoo” was founded on November 27, 2014, and then Bilibili officially launched a customized tourism project to Japan for those who love ACG culture. Bilibili tried to provide exclusive tourism planning and promotion services for their customers, such as leading them to Akihabara to buy cartoon figures and going on a parade to where some animations got inspirations from, etc. The price of this trip is ¥5400 RMB, including visa, round-trip airplane tickets, accommodation and tickets to scenic spots.

The service was later suspended and the Sina microblog of this project stopped updating since April 16, 2016.

1) China’s ACG tourism industry was not mature.

2) Bilibili was still in infancy stage, there may be some problems with the operation of this tourism project, this service was probably not very profitable.

2015-2016

On November 23, 2015, Bilibili Pictures was established.

On January 4, 2016, Bilibili Pictures’ first co-produced film Sherlock Special: The Abominable Bride was released, the cumulative box office of this movie in China was ¥161 million RMB.

On August 19, 2016, the fantasy animation film the Elf Throne was released, Bilibili Pictures was the co-producer of this movie. This movie had a cumulative box office of ¥2.589 million RMB. (Bilibili Pictures owns the intellectual property of this film.)

On December 16, 2016, the movie I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City was released. Bilibili Pictures was one of the co-producers. This movie’s cumulative box office was ¥6.458 million RMB.

Results:

Bilibili Pictures suffered from deficits. According to Shanghai United Equity Exchange, Bilibili Pictures had no revenue until May 2017.

1) Sherlock Special: The Abominable Bride is made for a relatively small group of people who have watched the British TV series Sherlock, this film is too complicated for the general public to understand.

2) The Elf Throne only had fine pictures, the plots of this movie were cliche and there was nothing creative to attract the audience.

3) I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City was thought to be a cut from the same documentary, it was sloppily made and not a sincere work. Besides, there were problems about the cinema’s film arrangement.