BEIJING (AFP) – China’s cash-flush tycoons have gone to Hollywood, snapping up studios and inking deals as Beijing seeks to expand soft power and boost its filmmaking savvy.

Here are some of the greatest hits of China’s tidal wave of investment into Tinseltown.

The latest was Alibaba billionaire Jack Ma, who invested in Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners to make movies targeting the growing Chinese box office.

Amblin, founded last December, is composed of several companies including Reliance Entertainment and DreamWorks Studios, and its releases include “The BFG,” based on the Roald Dahl novel of the same name.

The splashiest deals have come from Wanda, a real estate conglomerate founded by Wang Jianlin, an ex-military billionaire with ties to Communist Party elites.

Wang has sought to transform Wanda into an entertainment powerhouse, this year paying $3.5 billion for Legendary Pictures, the filmmakers behind the recent Batman trilogy and “Jurassic World.”

In July Wang was reportedly in talks to buy a stake in Paramount Pictures, and in September Wanda announced a partnership with “Big Six” studio Sony Pictures to invest in movies in which it would “strive to highlight the China element.”

Weeks later, Wanda was reportedly in talks to buy the production company behind the Golden Globes.

The company’s buying spree extends to brick and mortar investments: it bought US movie theatre chain AMC in 2012 for $2.6 billion, which in turn acquired the London-based Odeon & UCI cinema group in a deal worth around $1.2 billion.

Wanda also has a partnership agreement with North American entertainment giant IMAX Corp. to open cinemas in China.

Last month, China’s video-on-demand titan LeEco hired the former president of Paramount Pictures to lead its Hollywood-based subsidiary, Le Vision, to produce English-language films for global audiences.