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Indian Film Major Eros To Co-Produce Chinese Film Starring Huang Xiaoming

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Indian film production and distribution company Eros International will co-produce a Chinese film -- Tang Xuan Zang -- starring popular Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming and directed by HuoJianq. It will be released by March 2017.

Eros, the first Indian media company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, will co-produce the film alongside the state-owned China Film Group Corp.

The film will feature Tang Xuan Zang, a seventh century monk and pilgrim, who visited India in search of Buddhist texts and scriptures.

The co-production comes as part of a deal signed earlier this month by Eros and three leading Chinese state-owned film and entertainment companies: China Film Group Corp (CFC), Shanghai Film Group Corporation (SFG) and Fudan University in Shanghai.

The entities have agreed to promote, co-produce and distribute Sino-Indian movies across the two most populous countries in the world.

The $230 million (revenues) Eros wants to co-produce four films with two Chinese studios over the next three years.

The partnership gives Eros a foothold in China’s $4.8 billion film market, which is the second largest in the world after the U.S. In fact China, which produced more than 600 films in 2014, is expected to be the world’s largest box office in the next five years. China added 5,397 screens in 2014 alone taking the total count to 23,600 screens. (The number has quadrupled since 2010.) India has about 5,000 screens.

Through its partnership with the Shanghai Film Group Corporation, Eros is looking to use the intellectual property rights owned by both companies for the development, co-production and distribution of films across India and China.

With Fudan University, Eros hopes to license Fudan’s IP for remakes and co-productions in India as well as distribute Eros’ library of films across China.

The agreements were signed at the recent India-China partnership meeting between Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in China.

Eros has a movie library with more than 2,300 films across Hindi, Tamil and other Indian regional languages. The company debuted on the Forbes Asia’s Best Under a Billion list in 2013. It produces at least three top grossers each year.

Eros is run by Kishore Lulla along with his brother Sunil Lulla and a professional chief executive Jyoti Deshpande.