The acronym "BAT" has gone viral since last year's festival in Shanghai. (Photo : Pingwest)
China's triumvirate of Internet giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent seems to have taken over the Shanghai International Film Festival this year. At the "Big Data: Empowering the Movie Industry" forum, only one of the six panelists was a filmmaker.
Yu Dong, president of the Bona Film Group, might be right with his prediction that "all filmmakers in China would eventually become subsidiaries of BAT--short for Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent," during the Shanghai Film Fest in 2014.
In this year's film fest, only one out of six panelists was a filmmaker. The only filmmaker was Xu Zheng, the man behind the 2012 box-office hit "Lost in Thailand." The actor and director of the record-breaking film is now working on a sequel of the said movie.
Meanwhile, filmmakers maintained their independence in spite of new investors making inroads in movies.
Alibaba, the country's biggest online commerce company, was one of the sponsors of the forum. Late last year, the company inked a deal with Huayi Brothers, together with Tencent, to be its shareholder. The two online giants became the film producer's second-largest shareholders, with more than 8 percent of Huayi Bros. moving forward.
Recently, Alibaba paid $387-million for 8.8 percent of Enlight Media, another major film studio. The company also sets the record as its second-largest shareholder position.
Today the e-commerce giant boasts Alibaba Pictures, which kicked off its second movie project to shoot Sansheng Sanshi Shili Taohua (Ten-Mile Peach Blossom of Three Lifetimes) earlier this month.
Stuart Ford, IM Global chief, and one of the speakers at the forum, agreed that the revenue stream would be bigger than U.S. theatrical.
"You don’t need to be a soothsayer to say that five years from now, digital and pay-TV revenues in China will be the single biggest revenue stream of any movie globally,” said Ford when asked about the entrance of BAT into the China film market.
These triad have invested millions of dollars in film-related operations, including crowdfunding and ticketing. Still, these Internet behemoths needed to show stellar results for movie production.
