Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group has acquired an 8.8-percent stake worth 2.4 billion yuan ($387 million) in Enlight Media, one of China's leading film and TV productions, the company said in an announcement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
According to a strategic cooperation framework signed between Alibaba and Enlight on May 28, Alibaba pledged to cooperate with Enlight in building a new business model for filmmaking that combines traditional media, the Internet and financial operations.
The move to buy Enlight, who enjoyed recent successes with the 2012 hit "Lost in Thailand" and the sale of its rights to the "Rising Star" format to Israel's Keshet International last year, is the latest in Alibaba's bid to consolidate its foothold in the film and TV industry.
Alibaba, which owns Hong Kong-listed movie unit Alibaba Pictures, invested more than $3 billion in the entertainment industry last year as it moved to expand its content, which it hopes will draw more users and generate revenue.
In November, the company signed a deal with Huayi Bros., China's largest privately held film company. Under the deal, Alibaba will invest 5-10 percent of the budget on five Huayi films for the next three years, with the two working together on distributing the projects.
Alibaba's investment in the film industry is not aimed at making money in the short term, but is instead targeted at developing China's movie market, said Alibaba Pictures CEO Zhang Qiang.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma said that the market has huge potential and could be worth 200 billion yuan ($32.3 billion) in the future.
Ma wowed Hollywood executives when he visited Los Angeles in October, declaring Alibaba as the "the biggest entertainment company in the world."