Li Yansong is the President of iQIYI Motion Pictures

Founded in July, 2014, iQIYI Motion Pictures has the genetic advantage in big data, thanks to parent company Baidu. iQIYI has become China’s No.1 video site and leads the VOD market in 2014. As the market grows, the scale effect is visible. It is possible to monetize the video and film business, so iQIYI Motion Pictures is established to answer the demand of the ever-increasing internet users. Reported by Xu Jia.

iQIYI Motion Pictures is a new type of film company born in the internet era. Unlike traditional film companies, iQIYI Motion Pictures does not follow the convention of step-by-step development, production, promotion and distribution. What it does is to invest in quality blockbusters like GONE WITH THE BULLETS and innovate the way we do film business.

To be specific, we have the online distribution rights of GONE WITH THE BULLETS, the exclusive rights to develop its games, its tie-in merchandizing and e-commerce development. We’d also participate in the marketing and distribution of this film. It is estimated that iQIYI’s involvement in the film will increase its box office by 10% to 30%, because we will devise various inception or reminders to convert the iQIYI users into movie goers, to buy tickets.

iQIYI has already established its own O2O marketing team. Most of the team members are young and experienced netizens with a fair amount of digital literacy and social engagement. Our distribution team will be built in 2015.

At the early stage, iQIYI Motion Pictures’ priority is not to develop IP. As Gong Yu, Founder and CEO of iQIYI, has stated in our opening ceremony, iQIYI Motion Pictures is to be a service company – to provide marketing strategy and tech support for traditional film companies.

In the long run, we will explore big IPs, meaning self-made web series, films, variety shows, games and tie-in merchandizing generated from popular IP. At this moment, we are working with top film companies in China to promote their films, but it is noticeable that there are no more than 10such companies. So for iQIYI Motion Pictures, such cooperation is a process of selecting ideal partners. For example, we are now working closely with Emperor Entertainment in GONE WITH THE BULLETS and we are very likely to continue such collaboration in other films from Emperor or similar companies.

To cooperate with Hollywood studios is on our top priority list, and then we will work with top studios from Europe. In fact, we have been in talks with some of the biggest film libraries.

We also consider South Korea very important for content acquisition and to build co-productions. We have bought dozens of films and TV series at the Busan Asian Film Market this October. And we are now working on several Chinese-Korean co-productions to make big cast rom com, smaller budget suspense film and other remakes of classic Korean films. Our Korean partners are also big film companies. Regarding the big data, iQIYI is now building a database of the video content viewers. In the past, when people analyze the China market, the statistics they use is based on “all people” and that cannot be too precise. A team of Baidu engineers are now working on to divide different data for different industries. By then, big data can play an essential role in audience segmentation and making tailored content. I am confirmed that internet companies will bring the film industry lots of benefits. The film industry can thus be more customer- based: what, when and how to develop a certain content.

By the end of 2014, we will make an announcement in our movie ticket purchase system, which integrates gaming, e-commerce and tie-in products.

iQIYI Motion Pictures has already launched a China Night in this year’s Venice Film Festival and Busan Film Festival. Very soon in American Film Market, we will hold a number of events and forums to discuss VOD, technology and new models in movie- making. During AFM, we will also talk with Hollywood studios for potential cooperation.