‘Create a power to touch life’ that is the slogan that the company has stuck to over the last 20 years. Huayi Brothers president James Zhonglei Wang has spearheaded the company’s growth in the last two decades. Through the years, the company has become one of the most influential entertainment and media organisations in the Chinese Mainland, dominating the entertainment industry.
Although well-regarded internationally as the content leader in the Chinese market, Huayi Brothers continues to seek greater success for its entertainment business. Earlier this month, the company signed strategic deals with two of China’s largest online platform players that would boost various aspects of its business, including online entertainment, online gaming as well as its movie-themed park that opened last June. And in September 2014, Huayi Brothers announced that it was setting up a $130 million subsidiary in the US to invest in the distribution and production of movies and TV shows.
Speaking at the Asia TV Forum & Market 2014 in Singapore, Wang’s address on ‘Rising from the East – Huayi Brothers: Crossing Boundaries Going Beyond Entertainment’ shed light into his company’s experience in forming alliances and expanding into the international scene. “This year has been an exciting year for Huayi Brothers since we were first established in 1994. The response regarding our strategic move on our alliance partnership with our Chinese partners has been encouraging,” he exulted.
The company has recently been infused with $ 3.2 billion from three major online players like Alibaba.com, TenCent and China PingAN to expand its scope on the online space. “Movies have a short life span and if we stick to simply one business model then we can’t really do much with movies. Thus, the idea is to take the IP to both online and offline spaces to keep the churn of revenues coming through,” Wang added.
China currently has 632 million netizens and every user consumes 25.9 hours of content every week online. Wang plans to have this huge audience logging on to consume content made by Huayi Brothers in a bigger manner in the near future.
“Huayi is entertainment beyond boundaries and we are doing everything in our capabilities to take the movie experience to the consumers. The idea is to make the experience more immersive and interactive and our ties with Alibaba.com and TenCent will go a long way in making this dream a reality,” he informed.
The audience in China is very young and open to consume varied content nowadays; Huayi has17 movies on the floors in 2015 and most of them are being directed by younger directors as the company believes in promoting younger talent and also exploring more creatively driven content.
On an ending note Wang said: “I truly believe that everyone needs to adapt the changing trends in the way content is consumed in today’s day and age; and one must be geared up to cater to the various needs of the diverse audience that is waiting to consume edgier content.”