Chinese Internet giant Baidu.com has set up a 2 billion yuan ($307.7 million) fund that it will invest in more than 30 films over the next two years, the company said at the ongoing Shanghai International Film and TV Festival yesterday.
Baidu has established the fund through Baidu Nuomi, which offers O2O (online to offline) services including online film ticket sales.
The fund will mainly be poured into the production of action and animated films targeting young people, Xu Yongming, Baidu Nuomi's general manager of film-related operations, told an Internet Plus Film forum at the festival.
Directors, film producers and bank executives also attended the forum focusing on the integration of the Internet with the film industry.
Online data analysis, artificial intelligence and virtual reality are in increasingly widespread use in film production and distribution, and serve as catalysts for the development of the industry, speakers said.
As one of the top three Internet firms in China along with Tencent and Alibaba, Baidu has strong technological resources and wide network coverage, giving it a strong incentive to penetrate the country's film industry, said Xu.