Alibaba Pictures to combat China’s movie industry challenges with big data strategies

Alibaba Pictures Group plans to transform the Chinese film industry by sharing big data about its users with film companies and cinemas to reduce their reliance on box office sales.

“China’s film industry is growing rapidly, but there are also many challenges,” said Zhang Qiang, chief executive of Alibaba Pictures, citing difficulties like finding talented actors, directors and risky investments.

“Alibaba Pictures wants to help the small and medium-sized film companies become more competitive by using Internet strategies to overcome challenges,” said Zhang during an Alibaba Pictures event in Shanghai on Monday. “The challenges in the film industry are also opportunities for us,” he said.

Zhang said that Alibaba Pictures, the entertainment arm of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, aims to build financing platforms for small and medium film companies and provide data to enable targeted movie marketing in order to create new business models for the film industry.

Alibaba Group owns the South China Morning Post.