Wednesday, May 23rd, 2018

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

Track II: Haas Conference Center, Room 171

The China - Entertainment Industry Roundtable: A Discussion with China Experts - Investment, Joint Ventures, and Productions

Bennett Pozil, Executive Vice President, East West Bank

Robb Klein, Partner, Entertainment, Technology and Advertising Practice Group, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP

Daxing Zhang, Actor and Producer

Lianne Hu, President & CEO, Hus Entertainment

Larry Namer, President/CEO, Metan Global Entertainment Group

Lora Y. Chen, CEO, China Media Consulting, Moderator

Lora Chen is the President of China Media Consulting. Founding the company in 2002, she’s helped U.S. major studios, mini-majors, and independent companies navigate and develop their China ventures. Spanning more than 30 years between China and the U.S., Ms. Chen’s career has ranged from creative and producing, to teaching and corporate business development. Ms. Chen has done development and strategic planning for both U.S. corporations working with China and Chinese companies doing international business, having worked with the following: Wanda Film Group, Miramax Films, Inc., Walt Disney Imagineering, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Sony Pictures Entertainment, independent

production companies, and law firms. Before coming to the United States, Ms. Chen was a professional Cinematographer in China with five features to her credit. She attended Beijing Film Academy as part of China's “5th Generation Film Makers” along with directors Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Tian Zhuangzhuang. For the last two decades, Ms. Chen has been helping her alma mater, the Beijing Film Academy (BFA), develop and teach new courses with an international focus. Her course: “The Study of the U.S. Filmed Entertainment Business” has been popular since its inception in 2010. In April 2018, Ms. Chen will start teaching a new course to international students at BFA: “The Global Film Business.” Ms. Chen’s first book “Hollywood: The Study of the U.S. Filmed Entertainment Business” published in 2014, has been the best-selling film industry book on Amazon.cn since 2015, followed closely by its second edition in 2016. Ms. Chen is working with a group of Chinese scholars writing the “Global Film Business Blue Book” to be published by the Social Science Academy Press of China in 2018, authoring the chapter of “North America Film Business” within.

Bennett Pozil heads the Corporate Banking Division at East West Bank where his team specializes in entertainment lending, middle market lending, trade finance and cross-border business opportunities between the U.S. and Greater China. Media and entertainment lending has expanded significantly over the past four years under Pozil’s leadership, making East West Bank one of the premier entertainment investors in both the U.S. and Greater China and the only bank with a significant presence in both markets.  On the forthcoming Hollywood Adventures, the largest Chinese language film ever shot in Los Angeles, East West Bank worked with Perfect Storm Entertainment co-founders, Taiwanese American director Justin Lin and his mainland counterpart Bruno Wu as well as one of the premiere Chinese distributors, Enlight Media, to put this project together.  In the China entertainment space, the Bank has also provided financing for director John Woo’s two-part epic The Crossing, Cheng Kaige’s The Monk, and is the lead bank on the co-financing deal between Lions Gate Entertainment and Hunan Broadcasting.  From the US front, major clients in addition to Lions Gate include Tyler Perry, Good Universe, TWC and Netflix. Over his career, Pozil has structured the financing of a few hundred motion pictures, including major films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Hero; Fearless; and Lost In Translation.  He is also a frequent speaker in the US and in China.  Most recently, in November of 2014, Pozil moderated a panel “The C-Suite View: Big-Picture Strategies for U.S.-China Film” at the Asia Society U.S.-China Film Summit, with major film executives to discuss emerging trends shaping the Chinese film market such as big data, social media, the spending race for blockbuster production and shifting demographics.

Lianne Hu is the President & CEO of Hus Entertainment,  a multimedia production company based in Shanghai, China and Los Angeles, California, USA. It specializes in developing, producing, and financing heartfelt projects with an international appeal. Lianne is a producer, writer and actor, with credits in the US and China. Raised in Shanghai, in a theatrical family,  Lianne began her professional acting career at a very young age. Upon her arrival in Hollywood, she appeared in several films, including ground-breaking lead role in the film Now Chinatown, which has earned her rave reviews from critics and audiences, including appearing on the cover page of  the Calendar section of Los Angeles Times, and won Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Choice Awards of Best Picture at the New York International Independent Film Festival. Combining her rich experience in business development, corporate management and her diversified cultural background,  Lianne is a filmmaker known for developing projects with cross-cultural themes that are commercially viable and socially influential.  She produced political drama Shanghai 1976 starring Jean-Hugues Anglade; and an award-winning Tibetan period drama Prince of the Himalayas, which is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; and Lord of Shanghai, an epic gangster drama takes place in the risk-takers’ paradise - Shanghai in the early 1900’s, which was chosen as the closing film at the 19th Shanghai International film festival.  Upcoming new release  is Concubine of Shanghai, a sequel to Lord of Shanghai. Lianne is a member of SAG-AFTRA in US,  a member of the advisory board at the Asian World Film Festival and a committee member at the Chinese American Film Festival. She has a Master’s of Business Administration from Pepperdine University in California.

Daxing Zhang is a Producer and a Writer. Mr. Zhang has spent the last three decades working on only co-production films between China and the rest of the world, beginning in the mid-1980s with the Academy Award winning film “Last Emperor” by Bernardo Bertolucci, Academy Award nominated film “Empire of the Sun” by Steven Spielberg, and the very first Canadian and China Co-Production “Bethune: The Making of a Hero” starring Donald Sutherland. After moving to the U.S. in the 1990s, Mr. Zhang worked on U.S. studio films such as “The Matrix”, “Charlie’s Angels I & II”, “Daredevil”,  and played the role of a co-production manager as well as a cultural facilitator. As an independent producer, Mr. Zhang was an initial creative producer on John Woo’s “Red Cliff” and “Red Cliff II”. His other producing titles include: “Kung Fu Hero”, which he also wrote, “Man of Tai Chi” directed by Keanu Reeves, “Edge of Fear” directed by Bobby Roth (“Prison Break”), and “Troll - a Book of Montains & Seas” directed by Kevin Munroe (“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”), both of which he also co-wrote.

Robb Klein is the head of Sheppard Mullin’s Entertainment, Technology and Advertising Practice Group, and is based in Los Angeles. He specializes in all aspects of entertainment law, particularly film and television financing, production and distribution, merchandising, videogames and digital media. Recent productions he worked on include “Winchester” starring Dame Helen Mirren, “Wind River” starring Elizabeth Olsen, Rob Reiner’s “Shock and Awe” starring Woody Harrelson.  His clients include content producers, financiers, entertainment companies, technology companies, videogame developers and digital content platforms, and he is often involved in matters with an international aspect, with a particular focus on Europe and China. Mr. Klein is admitted to practice law in California and in England and Wales.

Larry Namer, President/CEO, Metan Global Entertainment Group: An entertainment industry veteran with over 45 years professional experience in cable television, live events and new media, Larry Namer is a founding partner of Metan Global Entertainment Group (MGEG), a venture created to develop and distribute entertainment content and media specifically for Chinese speaking audiences in China and abroad. MGEG recently launched the inspirational competition series The Bruce Lee Project in China, in conjunction with Company Films (co-owned by Keanu Reeves and Stephen Hamel), Bruce Lee Entertainment, LLC (Shannon Lee’s production company) and Benaroya Pictures. Mr. Namer was involved in creating the series’ original format and currently oversees sales and development for the project. The company recently launched the MGEG Film Fund I and serves as managing partner. Mr. Namer is the co-founder of E! Entertainment Television, a company now valued at over $3.5 billion USD, and the creator of several successful companies in the United States and overseas. Among those companies are Comspan Communications that pioneered Western forms of entertainment in the former Soviet Union and Steeplechase Media that served as the primary consultant to Microsoft’s MiTV for developing interactive TV applications. His vision and direction garnered VCTV several Emmy and Cable ACE award nominations, as well as recognition by Forbes magazine as the national model for local cable television programming. In 1989, he was awarded the prestigious President’s Award from the National Cable Television Association. He was honored with the “Outstanding Contribution to Asian Television Award” at the 19th Asian Television Awards in Singapore, and most recently was presented with the International Media Legacy Award at the 2017 Elite Awards Foundation Gala and the Hollywood Lifetime Achievement Award in Entertainment at the 2018 Hollywood Tribute Awards in Celebration of the 90th annual Academy Awards®.