Stan Lee’s Chinese Panda Hero to Meet Global Audience in 2018
Recently, the image of the Chinese panda hero character designed by Stan Lee for the upcoming animation ‘Panda vs. Aliens’ has been officially unveiled. The animation is still in the making and will be released globally in 2018, according to sources familiar with the matter. Fully funded by Chinese investors, ‘Panda vs. Aliens’ is executive produced by Stan Lee and produced by a Hollywood crew. SC Films International, a London-based film & TV sales company that distributed hit Chinese animations ‘Monkey King: Hero is Back’ and ‘Bigfish & Begonia,’ came on board the project a while ago as international sales agent. At the ongoing American Film Market (AFM), Viva Pictures has just acquired U.S. rights to this animated movie. Read more on Mtime
Investing in LeEco is not a Failure Says Sun Hongbin
Starting from last November, LeEco has been wrestling with severe cash-flow problems. Although Sunac China pumped a significant amount of investment into LeEco and became a major shareholder of the company, negative news around LeEco and its listed arm LeShi don’t seem to have stopped, which led many to think that investing in LeEco was a wrong move for Sunac. Recently, Sun Hongbin, Chairman of Sunac China responded to such comments while attending an industry summit in Nanning, China. Sun Hongbin still believes that investing in LeEco was a logical decision, as he was optimistic about China’s entertainment market and LeEco’s entertainment arm has been performing well. “We are still in the process of reconstructing LeEco’s assets. Once this process is completed, we will focus on growing the company. It’s unfair to say we’ve failed, because we haven’t really started yet.” says Sun. Read more on TMT Post
Great Wall is Determined to Acquire Gu Changwei’s Premiere Age
Leading Chinese TV drama producer Great Wall’s journey of acquiring Gu Changwei’s entertainment firm Premiere Age has been quite bumpy. Great Wall’s plan to acquire a 100 percent stake in Premiere Age was first revealed last December in the company’s filing with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. However, the filing was questioned by regulators because of the high premium proposed in the document. Great Wall then was required by the regulators to submit supporting documents and revise its proposal. Last Friday, Great Wall revealed its latest filing, which showed that the company still planned to acquire Premiere Age. Yet this time, Great Wall plans to acquire a 87 percent stake in Premiere Age. As a veteran film & TV production company, Great Wall has acquired 17 companies since its IPO three years ago. Read more on Sina
How Much Have IP Movies Made This Year?
On October 3, 2017 West-Lake IP Conference took place in Hangzhou, China. A white paper on IP was released at the conference. According to the white paper, 108 IP movies were theatrically released between January and September 2017. And the number from the same period last year was 107. Meanwhile, the total box office generated by this year’s 108 movies is 33.9 billion yuan, about 48 percent higher than that from last year’s 107 IP movies. In addition, among this year’s top 100 TV and web series steamed on Youku, 60 of them were adapted based on IPs. Read more on Ent Group
