A Huayi Brothers Media Corp cinema under decoration in Fengtai district, Beijing. Huayi Brothers is focusing on the expansion of diversified film-related businesses, such as cinemas, computer games, music, fashion and theme parks. Provided to China Daily

Wang Zhonglei discusses the wider entertainment industry and yearns for more time with his family.

Wang Zhonglei, who founded the country's first A-share listed entertainment company, Huayi Brothers Media Corp, with his elder brother in 1994, came to Shanghai with the usual entourage of film stars and their minders to showcase the company's latest multi-million yuan productions at the 15th Shanghai International Film Festival in mid-June.

Of course, Wang is a regular at this and other film festivals around the world. But this time he and his company had more to show than movies. Since 2009 when the company was listed, Huayi Brothers has embarked on an ambitious program of diversification into theme parks and other related businesses that now account for more than 70 percent of the company's total revenue. Huayi Brothers' sales revenue amounted to 892 million yuan ($140 million) in 2011.

Having made almost all the best-seller movies in the past decade in China, including the legendary Aftershock, with global box office revenues of more than $100 million, and working with many major movie stars including Chen Daoming and Li Bingbing, Huayi Brothers is trying to reinvent the traditional profile of Chinese movie companies as pure film producers.

"Now the company's focus is on its film-related businesses, such as cinemas, computer games, music, fashion and theme parks, to name just a few," Wang told China Daily.

He was keen to emphasize that his real passion remains in making movies but, for now at least, he is more preoccupied with building an entertainment empire that can stand up to Hollywood's behemoths such as Warner Bros.