China’s Alibaba Pictures is making its first move into Hollywood, partnering with Paramount Pictures on Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation.

The film arm of the ecommerce giant is making an unspecified investment into the picture and cooperating with Paramount on online ticketing, merchandising and promotion.

Alibaba Pictures said earlier this month that it is raising $1.6bn through a share issue to fund acquisitions and investments.

Mission: Impossible 5 will be promoted through Alibaba’s Taobao Movie ticketing platform, while merchandising will be sold through its ecommerce channels. The last few films in the franchise were big hits in China and Mission: Impossible 3 was partly filmed in the country.

In a statement, Paramount vice chairman Rob Moore said Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Paramount chairman Brad Grey and Alibaba Pictures CEO Zhang Qiang had met in Los Angeles last autumn to discuss ways to cooperate.

“We hope today’s announcement is the first of many collaborations between us,” said Moore. “We are thrilled to be working with them to create a successful campaign for one of our studio’s most popular franchises.”

Alibaba Pictures CEO Zhang Qiang said: “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is our first step toward internationalisation, and Alibaba Pictures looks forward to collaborating with more international movie studios where we can consolidate resources, technologies and talents to establish a world class integrated entertainment platform for the film industry.”

The film is scheduled for US release on July 31, while the China release date hasn’t been confirmed.

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