VIRTUE Asia makes entertainment play with launch of V47 studio

VIRTUE Asia has teamed up with Goldfinch International to launch V47 Entertainment, a new branded entertainment studio designed to help brands build long-form cultural IP across Asia, MENA and the Global South.

The move marks VIRTUE’s push beyond campaign work and into entertainment-led storytelling at a time when marketers are looking for longer-term brand relevance amid rising AI automation and shifting media habits.

V47 will focus on developing brand-backed films, series, anthology formats, microdramas, digital universes and creator-led stories intended to travel across markets. The model brings together VIRTUE Asia’s cultural and creative capabilities with Goldfinch’s financing structures and production network.

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“As we look into 2026, the creative industry is being reshaped by a simple truth: culture leads brands,” said Lesley John (pictured far left), CEO of VIRTUE Asia.

“Audiences no longer want brands to interrupt culture, they want them to actively contribute to it. With V47, we’re giving brands the ability to build signature entertainment properties – worlds, stories, and cultural experiences that audiences choose to spend time with. As AI automates the functional layers of marketing, entertainment becomes the next frontier for brand relevance," added John. 

The venture positions Asia and the Global South as the next cultural growth engines, a shift the partners say brands are only beginning to capitalise on. 

Meanwhile, Goldfinch, which has backed more than 350 entertainment projects globally, sees the partnership as a new way to fuse brand funding with entertainment economics.

“V47 blends culture, capital and creativity in a way the industry hasn’t seen,” said Phil McKenzie pictured right), COO and co-founder of Goldfinch. “By engineering marketing, storytelling and distribution together from day one, and building content hand-in-glove with brands, we’re generating IP with scale and monetisation baked in.”

Justin Deimen (pictured far right), founding partner at Goldfinch International, added: “Goldfinch has long believed that the next generation of global entertainment will be driven by new partnership models and new centres of cultural gravity. V47 embodies that shift.”

The venture will operate across formats spanning music, gaming, live events, film and TV, and creator economies. Its first slate will be unveiled in Q1 2026, with projects already in development including two unscripted docuseries, a live event series, a microdrama, a competition format and an animation series.

V47 also plans to build a branded entertainment fund and content accelerator to turn brand investment into scalable cultural properties with global potential.

The move mirrors a broader trend of agencies building entertainment and content arms to meet brands’ growing demand for IP that travels beyond traditional advertising. In 2021, VCCP made a similar pivot with the launch of Girl&Bear, a production and content studio designed to create film, digital and long-form storytelling at scale. The unit was set up to help brands move faster across formats and platforms as audience behaviour shifts towards content they actively seek out.

Publicis Groupe has also expanded heavily into this space back in 2013 through Prodigious, its global production network that handles everything from broadcast and digital content to CGI and long-form branded work. Both developments signal an industry-wide push towards models that blend creative, production and cultural storytelling, the same territory V47 Entertainment is now staking out across Asia and the Global South.

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