StudioCanal secures China content deals

French TV and film giant StudioCanal has struck two deals with Chinese SVOD services.

Chinese streaming platform YoukuTudou has picked up a package of movies from StudioCanal. The 50-film deal is for catalogue titles including About a Boy, Mulholland Drive and The Pianist.

YoukuTudou will launch the features on its subscription video-on-demand service.

Matthieu Zeller, executive VP international marketing, distribution & business development at Studio Canal said: “We are happy that this agreement will give the Chinese audience access to a film offering that is different from, but complementary with, the Chinese and American films that dominate the market. And we hope that it will be just the first stage of closer collaboration with our Chinese friends.”

Separately, Shanghai Media Group’s SVOD service BesTV has acquired a package stretching to ‘several dozen’ movies and that includes several of the same titles that YoukuTudou acquired.

Mingcheng TAO, CEO, BesTV, said: “The cooperation with StudioCanal symbolises that BesTV’s content cooperation has not only covered the traditional US-English, Japanese and Korean markets, but also expanded into Europe.”