Village Roadshow, WME form Perfect JV

Australia’s Village Roadshow Entertainment Group is launching a joint-venture film and TV prodco with talent-management firm WME-IMG and Chinese entertainment outfit Perfect World Pictures.

Greg Basser

The JV, named Perfect Village Entertainment, will have offices in Beijing and Hong Kong and will develop, finance, produce and distribute movies and animated and live-action shows for TV and VoD services.

Perfect Village will be headed by Village Roadshow’s Ellen Eliasoph, who had previously overseen Asian operations for the Aussie company. These will now be rolled into the fledgling JV.

WME-IMG will provide “support across its network of brands and licensing relationships,” while Perfect World and Village Roadshow will offer IP and production expertise.

Programming will be predominantly filmed in Chinese, with movies on its first slate including cyber-hacker thriller Reborn and Jackie Chan’s sci-fi drama Bleeding Steel. Projects are also being sought in Australia.

Greg Basser, Village Roadshow’s CEO, said the JV “represents the fullest possible realisation of our dream to build a localised film development and production operation in China, creating world-class content for China and beyond.”

Earlier this year private equity duo Vine Alternative Investments and Falcon Investment Advisors took a controlling stake in Village Roadshow.