Net giants make inroads in movies

Filmmakers insist they have retained their independence despite new investors

In an era of rapid change, it takes only a year for a whisper to grow into a chorus.

This time last year at the Shanghai International Film Festival, Yu Dong of Bona Film Group lamented that all filmmakers in China would eventually become subsidiaries of BAT - short for Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, the country's triumvirate of Internet giants.