Zhang Zhao, the chairman and CEO of Le Chuang Entertainment, formerly known as Le Vision Pictures, has resigned for “personal reasons,” the firm said.
Zhang’s resignation was announced in a statement posted to the firm’s official social media account Monday, which thanked him for his service. “Le Chuang will carry on as before, using film as a foundation…to create even more cultural value for Chinese families,” it said, adding: “Sunac Culture Group will just as before support Le Chuang’s development.”
Le Vision is the entertainment division of the now-embattled tech firm LeEco. The company has yet to announce Zhao’s successor, though numerous Chinese outlets report that it will be Sun Zheyi, president of Sunac Culture Group.
Co-founded by Zhang in 2011, Le Vision has signed big-name directors such as Zhang Yimou, Lu Chuan, Tsui Hark, and Guo Jingming of “Tiny Times” fame. Last year, it was re-branded as Le Chuang.
LeEco hit financial troubles in 2016 after the company threw itself into overly ambitious expansion. Its founder, Jia Yueting, resigned in 2017 just before Beijing froze his and the firm’s assets, and eventually put him on a government blacklist for credit defaulters.
Its majority shareholder is the Hong Kong-listed property developer Sunac, which rescued LeEco with nearly $3 billion in investment in the wake of those troubles, but later admitted the decision had been a “failure,” according to China’s Caixin. Sunac chairman Sun Hongbin stepped in for a spell as chairman of LeShi Internet Information & Technology, LeEco’s main listed division, but left the role just eight months later in March of last year. Sun Zheyi is his son.