Turner’s Asia Pacific president, Ricky Ow, is taking the media brand in a whole new direction, adding Turner’s first-ever theatrical film to his portfolio and riding ambitious plans by China’s Tencent to boost original production.

The vehicle is the 10-year-old Turner-owned emoticon, Tuzki, made famous in China on Tencent-owned instant messaging platform WeChat and widely recognised as home-grown Chinese. WeChat has more than 800 million monthly active users.

Created by Momo Wang in 2006 for Turner way before his time, Ow brought the rights back into the fold and is now working the rabbit as hard as he can. This year’s power push includes a Tuzki-branded restaurant, which opened in Shanghai in April thisyear. Sports-themed exhibition, The World of Tuzki: Summer Sports Gala, opened at the Galaxy Macau this year.

The theatrical film, which takes Tuzki beyond mobile chat and animated shorts for the first time, is being co-developed with Shanghai Tencent Pictures Culture Media Co. The film will fuseCGI and live-action content. Production is expected to begin in 2017, with a likely China release in 2018. Tencent Pictures leads production and distribution. Turnerwill drive the 360-degree licensing efforts, which include consumer products, live experiences and family entertainment centres.

The Tuzki feature film is part of Tencent’s slate of 20 film and television projects announced during Tencent Pictures’ first birthday in September. The broad strategy is “pan-entertainment” IP development, and the key elements are “youth”, “unique”, “high-quality” and “connection”, TencentPictures’ CEO Edward Cheng says. Among these are IP development with David S.

Goyer, screenwriter of the Dark Night trilogy; Kong: Skull Island, a new collaboration with Legendary Pictures following the success of Warcraft earlier this year; Koseidon with Japanese producer Takashige Ichise; and The Tibet Code, a TV series based on He Ma’s fantasy adventure novels.

Published on 30 September 2016