Chinese billionaire Bruno Wu has been quietly building his arsenal, which now includes deals with Justin Lin’s Perfect Storm and producer Avi Arad. Today(Nov. 5), he unveiled a $1.6B global content fund in partnership with Yucheng Group’s Muse Era. The strategic cooperation is designed to utilize the latter’s Ezubo financial platform to support film and TV makers in getting projects funded and developed.
The two companies plan to establish a Muse Era Cultural and Art Investment Plan called the China Global Alliance Film Fund for the international film market, with an emphasis on the Hollywood talent pool.
This is separate from the fund that Wu set up in 2012, which he reiterated to me today was more about M&A. This deal is about investing in entertainment IP — film and television for now — which may be expanded into games and live entertainment.
Wu’s Beijing Sun Seven Stars Culture now owns nearly 60 film production companies via acquisition and joint ventures and produces about 20 English-language films, 300 hours of English-language TV and more than 150 variety and reality shows distributed to 64 countries.
Wu, who has been building his relationships worldwide, says he has at least 440 projects under development including a Tetris movie and an update of the Deathtrap Dungeon video game. He’s even got a new version of Titanic underway.