Lionsgate, the Vancouver-based film studio, has signed a deal with Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce firm, making the studio’s catalogue available in an on-line streaming service.
Lionsgate owns the rights to recent hit movies and series such as the ‘The Hunger Games’, ‘Twilight’, ‘Mad Men’ and ‘Orange is the New Black’.
Service will begin next month to Alibaba’s hundreds of millions of customers with a set-top box.
In a joint statement announcing the deal, Patrick Liu, Alibaba’s president of digital entertainment said, “This cooperation signals our ongoing commitment to advance our vision of making digital media entertainment available to our customers anywhere, any time.”
After the American market, China’s has now emerged as the second-largest movie-market in the world.
Last year Alibaba handled almost $250 billion worth of products sold on-line. This year it is preparing for an IPO in New York in what is described as possibly the most valuable technology stock offering ever.
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