Walt Disney, the world's largest entertainment company, plans to co-produce Iron Man 3 with Beijing film studio DMG Entertainment as collaborations between Hollywood and Chinese studios increase.
The movie will have an investment of least 1 billion yuan (€120 million), DMG Chairman Peter Xiao told reporters in Beijing yesterday.
The Chinese company will invest in the production and help distribute it in China. The partnership is the latest in a wave of US-Chinese deals as Western operators look for a larger role in one of the world's fastest-growing movie markets.
While China limits the number of foreign films allowed into the country, pictures co- produced with Chinese partners can skirt the quotas. China also has adjusted the revenue-sharing formula, giving foreign studios a bigger share of ticket sales.
The agreement marks a milestone as "the first multibillion dollar franchise to be produced between Hollywood and China," said Dan Mintz, chief executive officer of DMG. Chinese elements will be added to the film, he said.
The Iron Man movies are based on the comic book about an industrialist who dons an armored, jet-powered suit to fight villains. Disney bought the comic-book company Marvel Entertainment in 2009. The portion of the movie produced in China will involve DMG as well as Marvel Studios' production and creative teams, Disney said.
The development of the Chinese market is important for Disney, and the US company plans to add more China-related elements to its future projects to appeal to the local audience, Stanley Cheung, managing director of Disney in Greater China, said at a press conference in Beijing.
Chinese ticket sales rose 35 per cent to $2 billion last year, making it the biggest market after the US and Japan, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. By comparison, worldwide box-office revenue rose 3.2 per cent.
Titanic 3D, a three-dimensional re-release of the 1997 James Cameron epic, grossed $58 million in China last week, the biggest opening the country has ever had, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday.
Bloomberg