Chinese Studio ... Foreign Talent

This caught my eye.

Tudou’s Gary Wang Eyes Animation Domination In China

Tudou.com founder Gary Wang is gearing up to launch an animated film studio in Beijing on April 1, making movies primarily for the domestic market. The entrepreneur told The Wall Street Journal he has secured tens of millions of dollars in funding from a group of international investors. With China now the world’s second biggest movie market at $2.74B in sales last year, the time is ripe, Wang believes.

Movie theaters are opening at a breakneck pace and the environment has improved for distribution, promotion and copyrights, Wang said. China does not have a large animation sector but DreamWorks is now in a joint venture with China Media Capital, Shanghai Media Group and Shanghai Alliance Investment on Oriental DreamWorks, a Shanghai studio that will develop and produce original Chinese animated and live-action content. Wang is recruiting local talent, but also scanning Los Angeles and San Francisco for directors, storyboard artists and senior animators.

There's a large, California-based talent pool of animators, designers, and board artists who have worked on wildly* successful animated features. Smart global business persons know these are the kind of folks that it's desirable to recruit. So I expect that one of two things will happen:

1) Gary Wang will set up an office in the eastern San Fernando Valley to interview prospective employees for his Chinese studio, or

2) He will set up a satellite facility in Studio City to feed his operation in mainland China.

Just because Hong Kong's Imagi tried it and failed doesn't mean it won't succeed the second time around.

$500+ million = "wildly"