Movie moguls gather at LA film summit

An American film advertisement in a cinema in Hubei province. China's growing middle-class have a huge appetite for films. Liu Junfeng/China Daily

Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix; Charles Rivkin, US assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs and the former CEO of the Jim Henson Co; and Miao Xiaotian, president of the China Film Co-Production Corp, gave speeches during the day followed by panel discussions and a dinner afterward.

Rivkin said that "economic relationship boosts the relationship of China and the US, and film is the best example of a win-win economic relationship between the two markets."

Topics included: Beyond: Inside the process of creating US-Chinese tentpole films; New Players: Fresh forces in cross-border film finance; Serial Dreams: Opportunities and challenges for developing episodic programs for broadcast TV or digital distribution; Content Convergence: How Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are changing the world; and The C-Suite View: Big-picture strategies for US-China film.

Jack Gao, board member of WeChat Films, who formerly served as senior corporate vice-president of News Corp., explained that the social media platform with 600 million mobile users in China has huge market potential.

Jeffery Soong, a partner with Chin Cultural & Entertainment Investments LP, mentioned that the Chinese audience is "picky and hard to satisfy. Chinese filmmakers have to make their products appeal to Chinese audiences even more than Hollywood films; otherwise, investors would rather invest in Hollywood films as they know they will make money."