That figure covers only movie financing and does not include the company’s budget for intellectual property and content acquisition, the people said. China’s largest social media company, which owns dominant messaging services WeChat and QQ, is laying the groundwork for a global entertainment empire. Founded last year, its film-making arm is beginning to produce movies based on its trove of popular in-house content, adopting a franchise model akin to Walt Disney Co and Marvel Entertainment LLC. Tencent teamed with Legendary Entertainment LLC (傳奇電腦公司) on Warcraft and has announced that it is working with David Goyer, a writer on movies including Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Apart from Tencent and Alibaba — which backed the latest Mission Impossible installment among other projects — billionaire Wang Jianlin’s (王健林) Dalian Wanda Group Co (萬達集團) has also been making its presence felt in the global entertainment industry.

Source: Taipei Times November 09, 2016 16:04 UTC