IPO of China film studio to ease funding crunch

MUMBAI: Wang Zhonglei, the chief executive of China‘s leading filmmakers Huayi Brothers has said that the company‘s upcoming IPO would help other studios tap new funding for their productions.

The production house hopes to raise 620 million Chinese yuan ($91 million) by listing on ChiNext, a new board for smaller companies that‘s expected to launch on the southern Shenzhen Stock Exchange later this year.

Zhonglei told the press that he hopes the share sale will open up new funding sources in an industry that usually takes a longer time to recover initial investments.

Wang said that the lack of capital is the biggest challenge for the booming Chinese entertainment industry. Government statistics show the Chinese box office surged from 920 million yuan in 2003 to 4.3 billion yuan ($630 million) in 2008 – compared to $9.8 billion in the U.S. last year.

Founded in 1994 by Wang and his older brother Wang Zhongjun, Huayi Brothers is best known in the West for its 2008 kung fu movie The Forbidden Kingdom, a co-production with Hollywood that was the first on-screen collaboration between action stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li.