ByteDance has invested in Beijing-based celebrity management agency Mountain Top, KrASIA’s parent company 36Kr reported on Thursday, citing corporate registration information.
Neither party has disclosed the deal’s financial details. When contacted by KrASIA on Thursday, ByteDance declined to comment.
Mountain Top, which was founded in 2015, maintains film and TV stars as clients. On its roster is Angelababy, an A-list celebrity who is one of Vogue’s Global Talent cover stars this year, as well as Zhou Dongyu, who was one of the faces of Burberry’s latest Chinese New Year ad campaign.
The firm also manages the brands of online influencers like Papi Jiang, who has more than 30 million followers on ByteDance’s short video app Douyin.
Mountain Top has branched out to develop its own TV dramas. It was one of the producers for several Chinese television series, including Shall I Compare You to a Spring Day, a show set in the 1990s that is about young love and brotherhood. It premiered on Youku in 2017 and won the 2018 China TV Golden Eagle Award, a national award for the country’s television industry.
ByteDance is currently developing a detective drama as its first online TV series, according to 36Kr.
