PETALING JAYA, Feb 25 — At the just concluded 91st Academy Awards in Hollywood, civil rights dramady Green Book won Oscar gold, beating seven other movies to win the Best Picture honours. This is in addition to awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
Alibaba Pictures Group Limited was delighted with the win seeing as it was a film it jointly produced.
The movie, co-produced by Participant Media, DreamWorks Pictures and Alibaba Pictures, and distributed by Huaxia Film Distribution Company in China, won Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Supporting Actor and Best Screenplay at the 76th Golden Globes last month. Its three Oscars made it the biggest winner at this year’s Academy Awards.
The movie’s winning achievements mark a milestone for Alibaba Pictures. The Alibaba Group unit is the only affiliate of an Internet company to ever co-produce a film that won Best Picture.
Green Book, set in 1962, is inspired by the true story of a tour of the Deep South by African-American classical and jazz pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), an Italian-American bouncer who served as Shirley’s driver and bodyguard. The film debuted in America in November last year and scored 94 out of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes, an American review-aggregation website for film and television. It has received 54 nominations globally and won 18 awards to date. The movie will hit the big screens in Mainland China this Friday and is one of the country’s most-anticipated titles of the year so far.
Alibaba Pictures brings critically-acclaimed Hollywood movies to Chinese audiences through its collaboration with Hollywood movie companies. Taopiaopiao, Alibaba Pictures’ online ticketing platform was the primary online marketing and sales outlet for another blockbuster hit, Alita: Battle Angel, a motion-capture sci-fi movie written by James Cameron. Other major titles under them include Mission Impossible: Fallout, in collaboration with Paramount Pictures, as well as A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey, in collaboration with Amblin Partners. A Dog’s Journey will debut in America in May while Ugly Dolls, another joint production with Huaxia Film Distribution and STX Entertainment will be released this summer.
Alibaba Pictures also co-produced and co-distributed the hit Chinese sci-fi movie the Wandering Earth which has generated over four billion yuan in box-office sales in China.
