TikTok creators in China are cashing in by summarizing movies

Have you ever felt that movies are too long? Do you wish they were a length of a TikTok? You're in luck, because some TikTok creators are condensing movies into minutes-long clips, Rest of World reports.

Popular creators in this genre include @cannadybree25 with over a million followers and @videoclipsforyou97 with around 170,000. You can sift through tags like #movie or #movieclips to find others. According to Rest of World, many of these accounts are by Chinese creators who utilize VPNs (as only TikTok's Chinese counterpart Douyin is available in the country) and dubbing services to bring these clips to TikTok's audience.

These accounts split a video summary into two or three parts (short videos), and provide explanations of the plot often translated from Chinese to English. For example, one video, titled "The adventures of the aristocratic abandoned baby" is a 2-min summary of the 2019 film Bombshell. As these movies are often made outside China, they tend to skirt copyright rules — and you'll notice that many don't include actual movie titles in captions or videos.

Trimmed movie clips are racking up millions of views on the platform, and it's paying off for creators. One told Rest of World he makes $1,400 per month, while another said around $350 per clip.

For those who are worried about the state of movies, though, fear not; these bite-sized videos seem to be introducing people to new films, and some want to watch the whole thing. More often than not, you'll read a comment where someone asks for the name of the movie — so they can get off TikTok to watch.