Wuyou Media announced a 'health' strategy — then a star creator collapsed

Wuyou Media, founded in 2016 by Lei Binyi, grew into what the Chinese industry calls Douyin's largest livestreaming agency — more than 100,000 signed creators and, by the company's own account, tens of millions of combined followers across its roster, built on turning already-recognizable or already-viral people into sellable personalities rather than simply running livestream rooms at scale.

Wang Nuannuan, publicly known as the real-life basis for a widely watched Chinese film about surviving a 2019 cliff fall in Thailand, signed a three-year contract with Wuyou in June 2023 as she restarted her career. Her livestream-selling schedule intensified under the agency: trade data cited by Beijing Business Today showed 26 livestream sessions in a single month during the November 2024 shopping festival alone, and she said she livestreamed more than 100 times over the course of 2025.

On May 8, 2026, Wang collapsed with convulsions and vomiting during a shoot and was hospitalized. Two days later she went live to accuse Wuyou of pushing anchors past their limits; the agency paused her contracted activities, and on May 11 the two sides mutually terminated her contract, with Wuyou citing a dedicated 30-person team, more than 80 brand partnerships and over 300 commercial deals delivered on her behalf since 2023.

The incident landed on an agency that had already spent a year absorbing talent blowups: in January 2025 Wuyou cut ties with signed host Zhang Dada after he was accused of beating and verbally abusing a former employee, and several other signed names quietly dropped Wuyou's branding from their accounts over the same period.