Fifth Journey cofounders Eric Tan and Craig Derrick.
Categories

Hollywood backs Fifth Journey to take movie-licensed games to China

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Hong Kong game publisher Fifth Journey has won backing from film studios Universal Pictures, Lionsgate, and MGM Studios to create movie-based mobile games for Asian markets such as China.

The business makes sense because China is already the world’s fastest-growing film market, with 15 movie theaters opening per day. It’s also the largest mobile-game market. While movie-game collaborations have a mixed history in gaming, companies that get it right can have huge payoffs. China has an estimated $5.5 billion mobile-game market, with more than 420 million mobile-game players, according to market researcher Niko Partners.

Unlock premium content and VIP community perks with GB M A X!
Join now to enjoy our free and premium membership perks.
Join Now
Already a member? Sign in
Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.