70,000 movie screens began going dark shortly after. Nearly all movie theaters in China remain closed.

Analysts estimate that well over $1 billion in ticket revenue has already been lost. Most Beijing industry insiders expect theaters to stay shuttered at least through February, which could soon begin impacting the planned releases of several Oscar-nominated Hollywood films, such as Searchlight's Jojo Rabbit on Feb. 12, Sony's Little Women on Feb. 14 and Road House's Marriage Story on Feb. 28.

With most of the Chinese populace anxiously stuck at home avoiding public spaces, online video platforms have emerged as a rare winner of an otherwise economically devastating health crisis.

Chinese studio Huanxi Media was the first company to respond to the situation by shifting valuable product from cinemas to online. On Jan. 23,the company announced that its comedy tentpole Lost in Russia, which had been set for a nationwide theatrical release Jan. 25 — the first day of Chinese New Year — would instead be made available online for free. The move generated a way of attention on Chinese social media, thanks to the popularity of the Lost In franchise. Directed by and starring local comedy superstar Xu Zheng, the first two films in the series grossed a combined $473 million at Chinese cinemas in 2012 and 2015 — at a time when China's box office was much smaller than it is now.

After canceling Lost in Russia's theatrical release just 24 hours prior, Huanxi had scrambled to ink a streaming deal with rising video giant ByteDance, best known as the