Chinese Starlight signs animation pact with "Hair Love" co-producer Lion Forge Animation

April 15 2020

Starlight Media, a China-backed film investor based in Beverly Hills, has signed a "multi-year, multi-project joint venture partnership" with Lion Forge Animation of the United States.

Here's more about the partnership:

The agreement will see the two partners co-finance and co-produce original animated films, as well as projects based on "Lion Forge IP and a wider cultural IP". The focus will be on developing content for the Chinese market and work based on traditional Chinese stories for a global audience.
The first two projects to be announced as part of the deal are a short film about the coronavirus, which is in the quick launch phase to begin production this month, and a film based on the Chinese literary classic. Journey to the West. The latter has already inspired many animated works, including the first Chinese animated film, Princess Iron Fan, released in the 1941.
The companies are collaborating on the visual and narrative development of the project, with animation "conducted" by the Lion Forge studio in St. Louis, Missouri. (Note that the word "conduct" in the press release suggests that the animaiton may not be entirely produced in-house at Lion Forge.) Starlight owns the distribution and merchandising rights in China and Lion Forge for the rest of the world.
Starlight Media CEO Peter Luo (left) and Lion Forge founder David Steward II.
Lion Forge was launched last year by David Steward II, the son of a billionaire tech entrepreneur. The studio is known to be based in Missouri, far from the animation centers of Los Angeles and New York, and to have an African American owner in Steward.
The studio's first venture was the co-production of Matthew Cherry's short film Hair Love, which won an Oscar in February. Steward reported that he wants to develop comic-based projects from publisher Oni-Lion Forge, which also belongs to his holding company Polarity. Last week, another affiliate, marketing and advertising company Lion Forge Labs, closed "due to rapidly changing economic conditions" (this Newsarama report has more).
Starlight Media is a subsidiary of Starlight Culture Entertainment Group Limited. He previously supported live titles as a hit comedy Crazy Rich Asians and WWII action movies Midway. The company says its deal with Lion Forge was made as part of a "development fund of over $ 100 million".
The deal evokes another US-Chinese animation partnership, Oriental Dreamworks, which was launched in 2012 as a joint venture between Dreamworks Animation and a consortium of Chinese financiers. The company released the first official US-China animated co-production, Kung Fu Panda 3, but was later relaunched as a Chinese-owned Pearl Studio.