Russian, Chinese media giants ink movie, TV, digital pact

PanARMENIAN.Net - Russian media giant Gazprom-Media and China’s state-owned Shanghai Media Group have signed a deal to work together in the production and distribution of movies, TV and digital content, according to Variety.

Gazprom-Media’s subsidiaries include Russian broadcasters NTV and TNT, and leading film production and distribution company Central Partnership.

“Negotiations have focused on TV series, documentaries, full-length feature and animated films. We have already put together an offer of 300 feature films for the first phase of cooperation with Shanghai Media Group. China is preparing their part of the proposal,” Dmitry Chernyshenko, general director of Gazprom-Media, told the Russian news agency TASS. The top priority would be the co-production of films and TV series, Chernyshenko said. The groups also discussed the possibility of cooperating on sports coverage.

This is not Gazprom-Media’s first move into the Chinese market. In October, Central Partnership signed a deal with China’s largest film distribution company, China Film Group. Central Partnership will provide Russian films for distribution in China, and China Film Group will supply Chinese films for distribution in Russia.

Last week, Gazprom-Media and China’s People’s Daily Online, which manages the web portal of the country’s largest newspaper, People’s Daily, signed an agreement to exchange news, documentaries and library content, as well as work together in the production and distribution of movies, television and digital content.

Gazprom-Media says it is also hoping to ink a deal with the Chinese search engine Baidu in order to distribute Russian video content in China, via Baidu’s iQIYI streaming video platform. Gazprom-Media is in talks with Beijing Cable about distributing Gazprom content on the Chinese company’s cable network, which would give Gazprom-Media potential access to millions more Chinese subscribers.