Alibaba all smiles as Mission: Impossible – Fallout opens big in China

Mission: Impossible – Fallout dominated the weekend box office in China, raking in $77 million over three days. The movie was helped by support from Alibaba, who teamed up with Paramount Pictures as an investor and official promotional partner for the Tom Cruise vehicle.

Alibaba Pictures, the film financing and production arm of Alibaba Group, is a key component of both digital and in-theatre promotional campaigns. It is also supporting ticket sales through its online movie-ticketing platform Taopiaopiao. Alibaba’s ecosystem offers Paramount exposure to more than 500 million consumers on its platforms, such as the online marketplace Taobao, video-streaming hub Youku and digital wallet Alipay.

Alibaba Pictures is promoting Fallout through mobile ads and splash screens across that ecosystem, such as it did in 2015 for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. It is tapping Beacon, its new data solution unveiled in April, which Li Jie, Senior VP of Alibaba Pictures and CEO of Taopiaopiao, describes as a one-stop shop of services to help film producers maximise efficiencies in advertising, performance monitoring and analysing consumer metrics, such as using heat-mapping technology to better understand foot traffic in movie theatres.

China is expected to surpass North America in 2020 as the world’s biggest film market in box office revenue and audience numbers, according to Deloitte.