China's Hunan TV is taking a step toward entering Hollywood amid a possible $1.5-billion film collaboration with Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., the entertainment firm behind the success of "The Hunger Games."
The Hunan TV & Broadcast Intermediary Co. Ltd. announced through a Chinese-language statement at the Shenzhen stock exchange Wednesday that it has agreed to co-produce films and TV shows with the U.S.-based entertainment company.
According to Lionsgate's agreement with the Chinese production firm, the American-owned company would be helping in the distribution of Hunan TV-produced movies in the international market as well as in the production proper itself.
In 2014, Lionsgate had already collaborated with Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba to launch a streaming service in China where box-office hits such as "Divergent" and "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" were successfully delivered to the Chinese online streaming audience.
The recent partnership, which reportedly would last for three years, shows a rapidly growing friendship between entertainment production companies in both the Asian giant and the U.S.
This, according to a report from Reuters, had been the case ever since China had been deemed as the fastest growing film market worldwide, with many Hollywood films receiving multi-million-dollars-worth of ticket sales from the Chinese moviegoers alone.
Vice versa, Chinese entertainment firms have also been planning to enter the "lucrative U.S. entertainment business" for several years now.
Aside from Hunan TV, the China-based Dalian Wanda Group Co. had also made a move toward the American entertainment market, particularly through buying the American cinema chain AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. for about $2.6 billion plus another $2 billion assumed debt.
This, being deemed as the biggest overseas acquisition by a privately owned Chinese conglomerate, is Wanda's first investment venture outside of the country.