Shanghai’s newly merged Worldwide Movie & TV Market kicked off Saturday on the Shanghai Exhibition Heart, launching a five-day occasion that mixes skilled business networking with public cultural experiences.
The market, operating by means of June 25, represents the consolidation of the Shanghai International Film Festival Market (SIFF Market) and Shanghai TV Competition Market (STVF Market) right into a single complete platform.
The occasion is housed on the Shanghai Exhibition Heart, initially inbuilt 1955 because the Sino-Soviet Friendship Constructing. The most important landmark attracts closely on Russian and Empire model neoclassical structure and spans 93,000 sq. metres, making it one of many largest built-in constructing complexes in central Shanghai.
Chen Guo, managing director of Shanghai Worldwide Movie & TV Occasions Heart, says the consolidation displays broader business developments. “The business’s evolving pattern the place content material creation, technological purposes, and expertise mobility more and more blur the traces between movie and tv,” Chen explains. “Many excellent firms and creators develop throughout each sectors. This integration goals to interrupt down invisible useful resource obstacles and construct a complete, environment friendly platform that congregates movie, sequence, know-how, capital, and expertise.”
The market’s most distinctive characteristic is its dual-track strategy. Skilled actions happen contained in the Shanghai Exhibition Heart, with devoted assembly zones, show areas, and business salons designed for environment friendly enterprise interactions. In the meantime, outside markets function platforms for public engagement, that includes immersive IP experiences and cultural merchandise. “We flip business achievements into tangible cultural choices for the viewers,” Chen notes. “This stimulates public enthusiasm for movie and TV tradition, offers priceless suggestions, and fosters innovation in content material and enterprise fashions.”
The strategy goals to bridge skilled effectivity with well-liked enchantment, permitting audiences to immerse themselves in storytelling whereas offering business professionals with direct shopper insights. The outside market emphasizes openness and interplay, with themed exhibitions such because the “I Am What I Am” movie, the place audiences immerse themselves within the story, or TVB’s unique merchandise that recall childhood reminiscences.
The market builds on deal-making success from its predecessor occasions. Final 12 months’s markets recorded over 200 exhibitors and 40,000 visits, with notable achievements together with a Korean delegation that generated 107 enterprise negotiations between Chinese language and Korean firms, leading to offers valued at roughly $56.3 million. The Korea Inventive Content material Company (KOCCA) organized a delegation together with main broadcasters KBS, MBC, SBS, CJ ENM, and SLL, bringing 13 main Korean firms to showcase content material on the Korea Pavilion.
This 12 months’s market has expanded worldwide participation with a devoted Worldwide Zone that includes an Worldwide Negotiation Space designed for international buyer-seller interactions, with 50 abroad exhibitors already taking part. Organizers are concentrating on even higher worldwide involvement in future editions, aiming to draw extra top-tier worldwide producers and streaming platforms.
The market is showcasing rising applied sciences reshaping content material creation and distribution by means of its UHD HUB, which options expertise zones devoted to AI and XR applied sciences. A standout attraction is an XR large-space undertaking about Qin Shi Huang’s Tomb, permitting audiences to expertise historic content material inside a digital surroundings. AI purposes are significantly outstanding, with demonstrations of multi-language AI voice-over and video translation applied sciences designed to assist Chinese language content material attain international markets extra effectively. The Shanghai Worldwide Movie Competition’s SIFF ING-AIGC program highlights work from younger creators using AI of their tasks.
The merger eliminates what Chen describes as “invisible obstacles that when separated movie and TV markets,” bringing collectively movie producers, TV manufacturing firms, streaming platforms, tech suppliers, creators, and buyers in a unified house. Actions are designed to be medium-agnostic, with boards, professional classes, and purchaser salons making use of to each movie and TV sectors. “The IP undertaking promotion occasion doesn’t emphasize the medium however focuses on compelling tales and IPs to draw appropriate growth companions,” Chen explains. This borderless strategy enhances alternatives for cross-field collaboration, expertise mobility, and know-how sharing.
Programming is curated round actual business calls for, with IP promotion actions pushed by booming curiosity in variations and franchise growth. Aligned with nationwide methods for ultrahigh-definition video, the UHD HUB presents cutting-edge know-how, reflecting business hotspots and addressing ache factors. “All actions are designed round actual calls for, making certain relevance—specializing in the most recent business frontiers, technological up-gradings, and artistic improvements,” Chen says.
Whereas acknowledging the significance of transaction quantity, attendance, and press visibility, organizers are taking a broader view of success. “We place higher emphasis on delicate energy and long-term results,” Chen says, focusing available on the market’s function in fostering cross-sector collaborations, offering cutting-edge business information, and providing platforms for modern tasks and rising expertise. The final word objective is for the market to grow to be “a famend hub for international thought alternate and business innovation, thought to be a steady creator of tasks” that advances each Chinese language and international leisure ecosystems.
Trying past this inaugural merged version, organizers plan continued refinement targeted on internationalization, business management, and enhanced interactivity. Plans embrace establishing forward-looking know-how innovation zones and increasing the profitable Cinemart initiative that creates channels between business professionals and the general public. “We purpose to determine this as a brand new cultural landmark that embodies Shanghai’s distinctive allure,” Chen concludes.
