StudioCanal has signed deals with two of China's big subscription VOD providers, Youku Tudou and BesTV.
Financial terms of the multi-year deals weren't disclosed.
Youku Tudou, which just launched its own film division, will get the SVOD rights of more than 50 of the studio's films, including About a Boy, Mulholland Drive, The Pianist and Terminator 2: Judgment Day and make the films available to Chinese audiences in the coming months. It will also include several French-language titles from the studio’s library, such as Francois Ozon’s Berlin best feature winner Water Falls on Burning Rocks and 2006’s Je vais bien, ne t’en fais pas, which won a best actor Cesar for star Kad Merad.
The studio also inked a separate deal with Shanghai Media Group's BesTV New Media Co to make several dozen titles – including Mulholland Drive and The Pianist, as well as several French titles, including Catherine Deneuve’s 8 Women and Cloclo - available to 20 million subscribers via BestTV’s SVOD service.
“We are happy that this agreement will give the Chinese audience access to a film offering that is different from but complementary with the Chinese and American films that dominate the market. And we hope that it will be just the first stage of closer collaboration with our Chinese friends,” said Matthieu Zeller, executive vp, international marketing, distribution and business development, of the deal with Youku Tudou.
“We’re excited to work with StudioCanal to bring great movies to Chinese audience via web, to better serve our subscribers,” added Youku Tudou senior vp Allen Zhu. “Our subscription service has grown 379 percent in revenue in the second quarter year-on-year, this deal will undoubtedly strengthen our service offering.”
“We are very happy with the signature of this agreement. BesTV will now be offering the Chinese audiences access to major films from the world cinema repertory,” Zeller said of the BesTV deal. “All the diversity and richness of StudioCanal's catalog will now be available on BesTV.”
Added BesTV CEO Mingcheng Tao: “The cooperation with StudioCanal symbolizes that BesTV’s contents cooperation has not only covered the traditional U.S.-English, Japanese and Korean markets, but also expanded into Europe. BesTV will be happy to introduce more films to its platforms from different parts of world.”