Heyi Pictures, the six-month-old film financing arm of China video site Youku Tudou, has cast the net wide for its first full-year slate of movie projects, selecting a classic song, a popular comic book and a small theater stage play for development, in addition to high-rating dramas and comedies.

Heyi has already co-produced 11 movies since launch last August, including three top 10 box-office hits: The Continent, a road-trip comedy; Fleet of Time, a coming-of-age romance; and The Taking of Tiger Mountain 3, an action adventure.

Executives are confident that the concepts behind 2015’s roster of six films (see slideshow below), unveiled last week, will yield a few more successes and hopefully some enduring franchises, having taken a cue from Youku Tudou’s extensive record of what audiences like.

As pieces of intellectual property, the combined source material for the six movies has already attracted around six billion views to date.

"It's a fast and reliable way to create content for the silver screen,” explained Heyi Pictures CEO, Allen Zhu, in a press statement. “IPs are in essence unique stories with branded characters, and they have a word-of-mouth based reputation as well as an existing community of fans.”

New cinemas are proliferating in China, with the number of screens almost quadrupling in the last four years, drawing attention from biggest China’s internet companies, Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent.

Baidu-backed iQiyi, Youku Tudou’s main rival, lifted the wraps on its film production venture, iQiyi Pictures, last July, outlining plans to fund eight films, including one in Hollywood.

Both Alibaba (which has invested in Youku Tudou) and Tencent have also been purchasing stakes in and, in Alibaba’s case, buying out domestic TV and film studios, signalling the importance of content within their expansive business portfolios.