BERLIN—Jiaflix President and Co-Founder Marc Ganis joined industry heavyweights at the Berlin Film Festival for a discussion on the explosion of online video in China. With 439 million Chinese now consuming video content, the industry’s major players are tackling the challenges of censorship, regulation and anti-piracy to export Western studio assets to the world’s fastest growing market.
Ganis said regulation is catching up to the dizzying pace of technological growth in China, making it imperative for operators to establish excellent working relationships with the government, secure censorship approvals and develop reliable anti-piracy strategies.
Ganis noted that China has more than 527 million mobile internet users, many of whom have an appetite for foreign entertainment. This creates opportunities for Western studios to monetize their creative assets by streaming it to smartphones, tablets and laptops on a subscription or transactional basis.
Jiaflix USA has engineered multiyear agreements between the government and three major studios (Lionsgate, MGM and Paramount) to stream their libraries and many future films on China’s only legal platform—government-owned China Movie Channel and its web subsidiary 1905.com.