Village Roadshow is looking to the Middle Kingdom to revive its fortunes with the establishment of a new China-based film and television production company to break into the fast-growing market.
Village Roadshow Entertainment Group (VREG), in which the Melbourne company has a 20 per cent stake, is teaming up with Chinese company Perfect World Pictures and Hollywood talent agency WME/IMG in the new venture.
Perfect Village Entertainment will have offices in Beijing and Hong Kong and develop, finance and distribute a slate of feature films, animation and online series in Greater China and around the world. The new company was launched at a press conference late Tuesday in Shanghai.
Ellen Eliasoph, who set up Warner Bros' Beijing office in 1993 and was most recently heading up VREG's Asia business, will run the new venture.
Earlier this year, Melbourne-based Village handed over control of VREG, which has produced films such as Mad Max and American Sniper, to Vine Alternative Investments and private equity firm Falcon Investment Advisors.
Village has struggled this year as its theme parks division, which owns Movie World, Sea World, and Wet 'n' Wild, was hit by bad weather and the fallout from the tragic accident at rival theme park Dreamworld.
Apart from the VREG sell down, it also offloaded a half share in its Singapore cinema business.
Brink of 'golden age'
VREG chief executive Greg Basser said in a release the company has been looking for the right partners since 2011 "to build a localised film development and production operation in China creating world-class content for China and beyond".
Perfect World Pictures chairman and CEO Jie Lian said he believed the Chinese film industry was on the brink of a new golden age.
Perfect Village's slate of upcoming films include Bleeding Steel starring Jackie Chan, which is out this year, and Zhang Yimou's Shadow, now in its final month of filming and due for release in 2018.
Asked about the financial arrangements, Ms Eliasoph said all three parties were investing in the company and the film slate, but would not announce further details.
