Christopher Spicer Interviewed for Bloomberg TV on Alibaba and Hollywood

As Alibaba president Jack Ma visited Hollywood to meet with studio executives and other industry leaders, Akin Gump entertainment and media practice counsel Christopher Spicer was interviewed by Bloomberg TV for the segment “How Big Will the Entertainment Business Be for Alibaba?”

Among the topics he discussed were:

• The impact on Alibaba: “It could be huge for them for a number of reasons. Primarily, they have a huge online platform, obviously, and they’re looking to grow that platform. The primary way they can do that is to acquire content, and international content is located here in Hollywood.”
• Chinese demand for streaming content: “With a growing middle class in China, right now the theatrical business there is booming and expanding. My guess is that, within the next three to five years, there will be a viable streaming market [in China]…The Chinese middle class want international movies, they want to see big Hollywood productions and they’re ultimately going to have the capacity to stream and want to see international shows, films, other types of content just like we do here.”
• The impact on Hollywood’s studios: “[T]here’s a long history of Hollywood studios and wealthy, high-net-worth individuals who have done well in other industries investing. It’s a big deal in the sense that there’s just huge numbers…It’s also a big deal going the other way, from U.S. to China. It’s easier to get a film distributed in China now than it was three years ago, but it’s still challenging, and it’s important to have key strategic relationships if you want to be in China and grow your business in the second-largest market in the world.”