电影流媒体新联盟

电影流媒体新联盟

新年的1月，万达刚刚并购了传奇，苹果被传准备收购时代华纳，出品《卧虎藏龙》的中国电影业巨头已和伦敦一家创业企业组建合资公司，将在中国市场推出电影流媒体服务。大动作之后，中国影迷能否得到更多好处？

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

mogul 有权势的人['moɡl]

joint venture 合资公司

alliance 联盟[ə'laɪəns]

navigate 操纵['nævɪgeɪt]

Mogul behind ‘Crouching Tiger' film to launch streaming service（431words）

By Robert Cookson,Digital Media Correspondent

The Chinese movie mogul behind Crouching Tiger,Hidden Dragon has formed a joint venture with a London-based start-up to launch a film streaming service in China.

Dong Ping,who sold film production company ChinaVision to Alibaba for $800m in 2014,last year took control of Hong Kong-listed company Huanxi Media. Huanxi will announce on Thursday that it has agreed an alliance with Mubi,a streaming service headquartered in the UK.

China's cinema box office revenues surged 40 per cent last year to $6.8bn and the country will overtake the US as the world's largest movie market by 2018,according to research group IHS. But its market for film subscription services is still relatively small.

Netflix,the world's largest film streaming service,which expanded into 130 more countries this month,has yet to enter China — having failed to obtain permission from the government to do so.

Huanxi and Mubi said they expected to launch their service in China this year,though they declined to detail how they would obtain the necessary licences from Beijing.

“We know how to navigate through all the regulations,” said Steven Xiang,chief executive of Huanxi Media.

Mubi's rivals in the Chinese market include Alibaba,Tencent and Baidu,whose video offering iQiyi has more than 10m paying subscribers.

Efe Cakarel,chief executive of Mubi,said the service had the potential to attract “millions of subscribers” thanks to its exclusive access to films produced by Huanxi.

“We'll have exclusive access to potentially the biggest films coming out of China,” he said.Ning Hao and Xu Zheng,two of Chinese's most successful film directors,are co-founders of Huanxi and will be making original content for the group. Lost in Hong Kong,their latest production,has grossed more than $250m at the Chinese box office,making it one of the country's most commercially successful films.

Huanxi has agreed to invest $40m in the joint venture and will own 70 per cent of the new company.

Mubi is licensing its streaming technology in perpetuity to the venture and providing operational expertise in exchange for a 30 per cent stake.

Huanxi has also agreed to invest $10m for an 8 per cent stake in Mubi itself,valuing the company at $125m. In its last funding round in 2014,Mubi was valued at $25m.

One of the main ways that Mubi differs from other streaming services is that it offers a small catalogue of just 30 films at any one time. Each day a new title is added and another is removed — a product feature that Mubi has patented in the US.