Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi Corp. has made its first investment in the film industry by funding production company, New Saint. The investment was funded together with Huayi Brothers Media Corp. with an undisclosed amount.
New Saint is founded by Zhu Yuangqing, former producer of a LeTV-owned studio. The production company has no history of making a blockbuster.
New Saint will focus on screenwriting and talent development, as they want to promote the significance of screenwriting in filming projects. Adding young talented screenwriters could secure funding to have their scripts made into films by established filmmakers, China Daily quoted New Saint co-founder Tian Yusheng as saying.
The venture has already enlisted several reputable Chinese directors including Gu Changwei of "Farewell My Concubine" and "Love on the Cloud" and Guan Hu of "Mr. Six" to serve in consulting and supervisory roles.
Xiaomi is the fourth largest smartphone producer by market share and sales volume. The Beijing-based conglomerate comes behind behind Apple, Samsung and Huawei.
Xiaomi is the latest Chinese tech to invest in China's booming film industry. In 2015, China collected over 40 billion Yuan ($1.6 billion) in box office sales stomping all previous records.
Similarly, search giant Baidu, tech titan Tencent and e-commerce giant Alibaba have all started or acquired multi-faceted entertainment subsidiaries in the past few years. Xiaomi's top rival in the hardware space, LeTV Holdings Co Ltd. also launched a film studio of its own four years ago.
"Xiaomi will make more investment(s) to build one of the biggest video content pools in the industry," the Chinese publication quoted Xiaomi chairman and CEO Lei Jun as saying, as cited by The Hollywood Reporter. Lei added that the recent investment is part of a larger strategy of winning over customers with content and not just with smartphone and smart TV hardware.
To date, the company already owns more than 44,000 hours of videos, including Hollywood movies, TV dramas and talk shows.
In November 2014, Xiaomi announced that it would invest $1 billion in TV and video content in an effort to diversify from its core hardware business. Xiaomi also made an investment in Baidu-owned streaming video service IQiyi. The Beijing-based company also formed a tie-up with competing online video platform Youku Tuduo.
