By Kelvin Chan, Business Writer
HONG KONG (AP) --Paramount Pictures said Friday it has inked a co-financing deal with two Chinese companies for the Hollywood studio's slate of movies over the next three years.
Under the terms of the deal, Shanghai Film Group and Huahua Media will also set up an office on Paramount's lot later this year, the studio said in a statement.
The Chinese companies will provide roughly $1 billion to finance at least 25 percent of Paramount's films, according to a person familiar with the deal who was not allowed to speak publicly.
Film industry publications cited the same figures.
Paramount is planning to produce 15 to 17 films in 2017.
It's the latest China-Hollywood tie-up, as both sides aim to beef up their presence in each other's movie industries.
Chinese investors have been expanding into entertainment companies overseas in a bid to boost the country's international cultural influence, also known as "soft power," as well as acquire expertise. Foreign producers, meanwhile, are seeking greater access to China's growing film market.
Last year, Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group teamed up with Sony Pictures to make big-budget films while Steven Spielberg's Amblin Partners partnered with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group's media arm to co-produce films for global audiences.
Paramount Pictures has already cooperated with Huahua on several films including "Transformers: the Age of Extinction" and "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back." Shanghai Film Group was an investor in the latter movie.
Paramount, whose corporate parent Viacom was embroiled last year in a bitter management battle, has been struggling to produce hits.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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