Wanda & AMC

[GeneChing]

Stumbled upon this while reading up on Monkey King - IMAX-3D featuring Donnie Yen. (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1031375)

IMAX further expands in China (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2010-08/03/content_11084880.htm)
By Wu Chong (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-03 09:12

NEW YORK - Canadian movie format company IMAX Corp has recently signed another agreement to team up with Chinese partners to open more theaters in China.

On July 21, IMAX signed an agreement with Guangzhou Jinyi Film & Television Group to open eight IMAX theaters in China. The agreement adds to the four IMAX theaters already contracted to Jinyi.

The 12 IMAX theaters are scheduled to be completed by December 2010.

IMAX is expediting its growth in China through its ambitious plan to bring China's total number of IMAX theaters to at least 65 by 2014.

IMAX further expands in China

Rechard Gelfond, cheif executive of IMAX Corp
"China, Russia and Japan are right now our biggest growing points," said Rechard Gelfond, cheif executive of IMAX Corp. "It is interesting that China has many new multi-use complex infrastructures, and it's easy to integrate IMAX theaters (into them)."

In addition, the exploding number of new theaters and rapid growth of the middle-class population in China in recent years has also given IMAX new impetus to grow in this market, Gelfond said.

Several weeks ago the Canadian company inked a deal with Lumiere Pavilions, a private movie exhibition company to install 3D IMAX theater systems. The first system will be open in Chongqing at the end of 2010, and the second in downtown Guangzhou in August 2011. The installation of the third one will be completed by 2012.

Earlier this year IMAX hooked up with Wanda Cinema Line Corp to add another three theaters in Guangzhou, Wuhan and Dalian, which will bring Wanda 14 IMAX screens total by the end of 2012. In June, it also announced a partnership with Huayi Bros Media Corp to produce three IMAX-formatted movies.

"Our overall strategy in China is to continue the growth of the IMAX theater network through partnerships with the country's leading exhibitors, media companies and commercial real estate developers," Gelfond said.

"Our Chinese network is scheduled to at least double in size over the next couple of years, and the high number of signings we've had year-to-date worldwide is positioning us for significant network growth in 2010, 2011 and beyond."

According to the CEO, the company's strategy is to penetrate the first-tier cities by setting up more theaters and to introduce "portable IMAX" theaters into second-tier cities, which have no equivalent infrastructure available yet.

"Portable theaters," as Gelfond described them, are like the bubble over a tennis complex, which can be blown up temporarily and then taken down easily. With this technology, IMAX will be able to overcome the shortage of facilities in less developed cities and expand its presence further.

According to IMAX, the company has sold 103 theatre systems globally this year to date, compared to only 35 systems in 2009. And it's estimated that the company has built more than 350 IMAX theatres in 42 countries, with about 60 per cent in North America.

China is IMAX's fastest-growing market with 23 IMAX cinemas opened to date.

Besides plugging in more IMAX screens in China, the Canadian company is also "exploring the business of digitally re-mastering mainstream Chinese films into IMAX format," the CEO said. "China is the first place we produced local films."

Aftershock, the company's first product with Huayi Bros, was just released across China with a version that has been digitally re-mastered for IMAX presentation. Gelfond said the early results of the movie were very promising, and the two partners will soon announce their next plan.

But he added that in addition to their relationship with Huayi, IMAX is also "in discussion" with other studios to explore the business of "releasing local films in the format". Additional deals of this kind may be announced during the year, Gelfond added.

The company recently announced a rise in its second quarter earnings, with revenue jumping 38 percent from $40.4 million last year to $55.6 million. Besides its strong growth in China, the company also sees a promising future in the Russian market, which it signed a deal for up to 14 theatres this week.

[GeneChing]

This report is a little out of my price range

China Film Industry Report, 2009-2010 (http://www.researchinchina.com/Htmls/Report/2010/5964.html)

Published: Sep/2010
Hard Copy USD $1,400
Pages:71 Electronic(PDF) USD $1,500
Report Code: ZHR005 Enterprisewide USD $2,100
Price (Chinese Version + English Version) USD $2,000

Abstract
Currently, China’s film industry is experiencing a golden period. No matter what film production, box office, financing and cinema construction witness the explosive growth.

In 2009, Chinese mainland achieved RMB6.206 billion of film box office, with a growth rate of as high as 43%. Over the past five years, it grew at a CAGR of 30%, far higher than that of China’s GDP.

In H1 2010, the film box office in China exceeded RMB4.8 billion, rising 107% from that in the same period of 2009, and surpassing that of the year 2008, showing hug potentials of Chinese film market.

In early 2010, the State Council Secretariat Guiding Opinions Concerning Stimulating Flourishing and Development of the Film Industry was issued to firstly specify the film industry into national strategic industries.

The boom of China’s film market during 2008-2009 has spurred the flood of capital into the film industry. The film industry of China will continue to grow at a rate of over 60% both in 2010 and 2011, while the growth rate will slow down after 2012. In Japan, the film market gets increasingly saturated, and the growth rate tends to be moderate. As is presented below, China will become the world’s second largest film market by 2012, with the domestic box office revenue surpassing Japan’s.

Comparison of China's and Japan’s Box Offices and Growth Rates, 2005-2013E (Unit: USD mln)
http://www.researchinchina.com/UpLoads/Article/201009/2010091605.gif
Source: ResearchInChina

The film producers, distributors and exhibitors all have extended towards upstream or downstream in order to maximize its profit from every industrial link by the model of production+distribution+cinema. The mergers among leading companies in upstream, middle stream and downstream are driven by capital to achieve maximal margin. The state-owned companies like China Film Group Corporation (CFGC) and Shanghai Film Group Corporation are accelerating to build cinemas and cinema circuits by their advantageous positions, and they are expected to go public in 2010 to obtain more fund. Huayi Brothers Media Corporation, the leader in private film firms, was successfully listed in 2009. Poly Bona, a film distribution company, not only participates in cinema construction, but also develops towards the upstream production to make more profit.

Meanwhile, a group of new investment entities presented themselves in Chinese film production market. Especially, the box office success that Perfect World and Letv.com respectively invested Sophie's Revenge and Welcome to Shamatown achieved has attracted foreign capital to aggressively enter the film production sector.

China’s film production market characterizes still a low concentration degree. CFGC and Huayi Brothers, respectively ranking the first and the second places, only occupies 10% and 9% market shares. Meanwhile, China’s top four film producers only accounts for 26% of total film box office, still less than that of the United States’ three producers in China, 27%.

However, the film distribution market of China is comparatively monopolized, with a higher concentration degree in box office. In 2009, the top four film distributors, CFGC, Huaxia Film Distribution, Poly Bona and Xiying Huayi occupied 75.7% market shares in all, and revenue-sharing imported film could be only distributed by CFGC and Huaxia Film Distribution. CFGC continued to take a lead in distribution market by right of its rich cinema circuit resource.

China has a relatively high concentration degree in cinema circuit field, since the top four, Wanda International Cinema, China Film Stellar Theater Chain, Shanghai United Circuit and New Film Association, totally covers 46.8% of box office shares. Of which, backed by Wanda’s business, Wanda cinema circuits have seized the central business district, and increases 100 screens annually.

Along with the explosive growth of film box office, only approximately 130 films of the total 465 China-produced films were exhibited in cinemas in 2009, and the rest 2/3 were not, which was mainly caused by the inadequacy of cinemas and screens that couldn’t afford to exhibit so many films. Therefore, cinema investment will be the focus of China’s film industry development in a long run.

In spite of the strong growth of film box office revenue in first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou as well as still vast room for cinema investment, the fierce competition also get increasingly intensified. In comparison, the emerging second-tier and third-tier cities such as Changchun, Changsha, Dalian and Xi’an grow up and all have great market potential. Based on the analysis of comprehensive factors like consumption level of urban residents, cinema box office, regular urban population, audience number per exhibition, local housing price, cinema number and screen number, the cinema investment rating model is built to conclude the ranking of top 16 cities in China by investment value, as is shown below.

China’s Top 16 Cities by Cinema Investment Value, 2010
http://www.researchinchina.com/UpLoads/Article/201009/2010091607.gif
Source: ResearchInChina

The report makes an in-depth analysis of status quo, competition layout and major companies of production, distribution, exhibition and derivative commodities of China’s film industry chain, and forecasts cinema construction in hotspot cities, and film derivative market.

[GeneChing]

This follows up on what I was saying in my Karate Kid cover story: Is The Karate Kid a Kung Fu Dream? (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=908) (2010 July/August (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=902))

China's investment in silver screen (http://www.mysinchew.com/node/49066)
2010-12-06 16:44

http://www.mysinchew.com/files/preview/292x300..MOVIES2_copy1.jpg
Actors Jaden Smith (left) and Jackie Chan perform in a scene from the movie The Karate Kid. Mostly made in Beijing and produced by China Films and Sony's Columbia Pictures, the movie took box office receipts of more than US$356 million worldwide.

=====================================

By BAO CHANG
China Daily
Beijing, Monday 6 December 2010

The movie tells a story about 13 women living alongside Qinhuai river in Nanjing who extricated their fellow countrymen from Japanese troops during World War II.

But The 13 Women of Nanjing, Chinese arts guru Zhang Yimou's new work, is not a purely Chinese creation. The dialogue is in English, the star is a Hollywood celebrity and the technical know-how with which it is made comes from the US film industry.

Zhang, China's most famous movie director, will name the movie's starring actor sometime in December. It is hoped the move will guarantee its entry into the US film market.

Bringing in Hollywood actors is not the only way forward for Chinese film companies that want to explore oversea markets. Chinese firms are now speeding up their internationalisation and strengthening ties with their peers across the Pacific through direct investment in Hollywood, as the dream factory has seen financing from its home market drying up in recent years.

New Pictures Film Co Ltd, the film-producing and distributing company, specialises in investing in the production of Zhang's movies, including The 13 Women of Nanjing. It has been reported by Chinese media that it may now buy stakes in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc (MGM) after the Hollywood film studio giant filed for bankruptcy in early November 2010 because of its inability to repay its US$4 billion debt.

State-owned China Films Group Corporation contributed US$5 million early this year to help finance the remaking of The Karate Kid, starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith, Hollywood movie star Will Smith's son.

Mostly made in Beijing and produced by China Films and Sony's Columbia Pictures Industries Inc, the movie took receipts of more than US$356 million worldwide and China Films was given distribution rights for the movie in China and some other Asian countries in return for its investment.

"A good combination between Chinese and Western modes can be an incentive to the development of the Chinese movie industry and will also give Chinese movies an international status," China Films said.

On 26 September 2010, Orange Sky Golden Harvest Entertainment, a Hong Kong-based film company, paid US$25 million for a 3.3% stake in Legendary Pictures, one of the largest film studios in the US.

Shanghai Film Group Corporation (SFGC) also plans to acquire some cinemas in the east of the US, going abroad and choosing the biggest film market in the world as its first overseas development.

"I have begun to negotiate with some companies in the east of the US about the acquisition of their cinemas," Ren Zhonglun told 21st Century Business Herald, adding that acquiring cinemas in the international market provides business opportunities for Chinese film companies who plan to develop abroad.

China is now offering huge potential as a funding source for Hollywood, always a dream factory for movie fans across the world and powered by US moguls.

"Chinese investors are very sophisticated and have been contemplating the kinds of investments they want to make," Bloomberg cited Charles Paul, a longtime Hollywood executive and an adviser to investment bank Centerview Partners, as saying.

"Their activity may pick up as Chinese officials become more comfortable with the ways of Hollywood and the Chinese government hopes to gain the technical and creative know-how to build its film industry through investment," Paul said.

The Poly Bona Film Group, China's biggest private movie distributor-turned-movie studio, has filed for a Nasdaq initial public offering seeking to raise US$80 million through the sale of its shares to US investors, papers filed in New York show.

"We will witness better development if we strengthen the cooperation with foreign film studios at a time when the Chinese film industry is growing at a staggering rate," said Yu Dong, president of Poly Bona.

Chinese investors in the film industry are expecting a good return from their partnership with foreign film studios because China will further open its entertainment market next year, according to World Trade Organisation regulations.

In March 2011, the rule that limits the number of foreign films that can be shown in the domestic market every year to just 20 will be lifted.

Zhao Rui, vice-president of Jackie Chan Cinema, jointly owned by the film star and Beijing Sparkle Roll International Cinemas Management Co, said: "If the Chinese film market can be more open, we will definitely take advantage of Jackie's network in Hollywood to expand our business in foreign markets."

However, industry experts believe Chinese film companies should develop themselves more before offering huge capital just for a Hollywood ticket.

"At present, most Chinese companies are not strong enough to meet market demand from Hollywood, where US film studios have their own operating rules, including capital operation, profit models, the film production and industry chain, all of which are different from those in the Chinese market," said Gao Jun, vice-general manager of New Film Association, one of China's largest film distributors.

After news about the MGM bankruptcy emerged, not only New Pictures Company, but also the state-owned China Films and Huayi Brothers Media Corporation, were said to have bought a stake in the film studio as part of their efforts to enter the international film market.

China Films is the largest film enterprise with a complete industry chain in the country and Huayi is the first listed film company in China.

"None of these film companies is capable of acquiring all of MGM, because even the gross output value of China's film industry is not enough to pay the Hollywood studio's total debt," said Gao, of New Film Association.

According to the China Film Producers Association (CFPA), takings hit 8 billion yuan for the first n9 months of this year and are set to reach more than 10 billion yuan for the whole year, a 60% increase compared with 2009.

However, the MGM debt is $4 billion, nearly three times the expected box-office receipts of the emerging film market for the whole year.

In the next three to four years the number of screens in China will increase to 13,000 from 8,000. The US has about 39,000 screens. China is also IMAX's fastest-growing market with 23 of the high-tech cinemas opened to date. Giant-screen movie technology company IMAX Corp has plans for more than 50 IMAX theaters by 2012 in China.

In mid-June 2010, IMAX and Wanda Cinema Line Corporation, one of the fastest growing cinema chains in China, announced plans to add three additional IMAX systems, in the cities of Quanzhou, Wuhan and Dalian.

Wanda Movie Theatre also plans to build more than 70 cinemas by the end of this year and make the total more than 120 by 2012, aiming to generate revenue of 3 billion yuan.

"Apart from industry insiders, investors without industry background and professional knowledge have also streamed into film investment, creating haphazard competition within the industry," said Liu Debin, general manager of Poly Film Investment Co Ltd, the cinema branch of Poly Bona.

According to Liu, investors from the coal industry in China are increasingly rushing to the film industry, in both domestic and foreign markets, in an attempt to get a cut of the profits brought by the fast growth of the industry.

CFPA predicted that Chinese receipts will reach 40 billion yuan by 2015, making the country second only to the US.

Foreign blockbusters are believed to be a catalyst for China's fast-growing box office receipts. James Cameron's Avatar accounted for 18% of China's total box office revenue for the first 9 months of this year, according to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

"To be powerful in the international market, Chinese people should also make more of an investment in creating a storyline tailored to the tastes of global audiences instead of just the Chinese," said Zhang Jiarui, director of Distant Thunder, one of the most popular films at the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Asia News Network

[GeneChing]

I was wondering how I missed this and then I saw the publication date.


On The Cover/Top Stories
A New Studio System (http://www.forbes.com/global/2011/0214/companies-mayer-warner-qin-hong-movie-boss.html)
Gady Epstein, 02.03.11, 06:00 PM EST
Forbes Asia Magazine dated February 14, 2011
Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner had the right idea in prewar Hollywood, thinks Qin Hong of Beijing.

In 2006 the young and not-yet-renowned director Lu Chuan took his idea for an ambitious epic about the Japanese massacre at Nanjing, already rejected by a major Chinese studio, to a young, unknown film producer who, as one of the producer's own friends chided him, "didn't know anything about movies." Qin Hong, then 35, had taken the helm of Stellar Megamedia Group, a moneylosing company whose listed Hong Kong arm was on the verge of liquidation, selling off assets to stay afloat.

It didn't seem like a good time to take a big gamble on a movie--especially one that could run afoul of history-sensitive censors, that would be shot in black-and-white and that would ultimately require a budget of $10 million. All in an immature movie market with a shortage of quality cinemas, where $10 million in total box office qualified as a certifiable hit, far short of what Qin would need to make his money back on Lu's film.

Did Qin want to take that big a risk? He couldn't get his money in fast enough. "He called me, he said he finished the whole script in one night and he decided to make this movie," Lu says. "He gave me the money without a contract. That really touched me. Without a contract, without anything, he gives me the money."

City of Life and Death went on to become one of China's top-grossing films of 2009, with $26 million in receipts, making Lu a star director and catapulting lead-investor Qin into his next role, Hollywood-style movie mogul, at just the right moment. For the last 18 months Qin has been buying up movie theaters, signing stars and directors to his in-house agency, and making movies with his contracted talent to show in his theaters. He is in a costly race with private rivals and with the government's vaunted China Film Group to integrate vertically like Hollywood in the 1930s. The valuable prize at stake is China's suddenly lucrative box office in the 2010s.

The nation known internationally for movie piracy is entering its own golden age of cinema-going: Box office receipts in China grew an astounding 64% in 2010 to $1.5 billion, on top of more than 40% growth the year before. That is still far behind the $11 billion collected in the U.S. and Canada last year, but China could surpass the number two and three markets, Japan ($2.7 billion in 2010) and India (estimated $2.2 billion), by 2012. In January the Chinese Western Let the Bullets Fly became the top-grossing domestic film ever, with more than $100 million in ticket sales. The country has more than 6,000 movie screens and is on its way to 20,000, adding new screens at the rate of 4 per day, mostly digital and many of them 3-D-capable, in modern multiplexes that hardly could be found in China a decade ago. Industry predictions of 40% annual growth for the next five years would have China potentially rivaling the U.S. for box office supremacy by the end of the decade.

"Nobody could have guessed where we are today five years ago," says Peter Chan, a star Hong Kong director who is working with Stellar to market his films in China, including the big-budget martial arts film Swordsmen, due out later this year. How big can the market get? "Anything is possible. I think it's beyond anybody's imagination, because we're actually talking about the tip of the iceberg right now."

Rising up to profit from this is a Beijing version of Hollywood's infamous studio system, when the Big Five studios owned not only their movies, but also the talent that made them and the theaters that showed them, before a 1948 Supreme Court decision broke up their oligopoly. Sixty years later Qin and his competitors believe a sharp-elbowed campaign of vertical integration will be necessary to survive in what Qin calls China's "competitive monopoly" system. (Japan also developed integrated studios, in Toho and Shochiku.)

"Lots of people have seen the future potential of the film market, but the competition is fierce," Qin says. His personality seems made for the task. Stocky in build, open-faced with semi-rimless glasses, Qin compensates for his unassuming appearance and lack of a film background with a serious demeanor, a steady diet of Marlboro cigarettes and a Hollywood-size ego.

From his office in downtown Beijing, Qin coolly runs down the weaknesses of his formidable competitors: Blockbuster-making studio and talent agency Huayi Brothers, whose film Aftershock took in an estimated $100 million last year, is making a very late and modest entry into the cinema-operating business; the leading non-state-owned distributor Bona Film Group, which had a lackluster U.S. IPO in December, has quickly accelerated its production of movies but must play catch-up to sign talent and add theaters; and real estate giant Dalian Wanda Group, though positioned to remain the dominant owner-operator of cinemas, is starting from close to zero in production and talent.
continued next post

[GeneChing]

Page 2 of 3 (http://www.forbes.com/global/2011/0214/companies-mayer-warner-qin-hong-movie-boss_2.html)

"Stellar is the one that's involved in all parts of the business," Qin says, and he plans to take on each competitor in its area of strength, with increased recruitment of talent to build an agency to challenge Huayi Brothers' much larger roster, and a planned $135 million invested in 18 to 30 films over the next three years.

The costly, risky but potentially most lucrative cornerstone of Qin's strategy is the expansion of movie theaters, which keep half of the box office (minus a chunk for their landlords), providing the crucial cash flow needed to build Beijing's studio system, as movie productions still often end up in the red. Theaters also take half the gate on foreign movies like Avatar, which smashed all domestic competitors with more than $200 million in ticket sales in China. Stellar, which had only 3 theaters as of July 2009, now operates 22 cinemas with 135 screens, making Qin's the seventh-largest movie theater company in China, according to Shanghai cinema consultancy Artisan Gateway. Industry leader Wanda, led by billionaire Wang Jianlin, has 71 cinemas and a big advantage for expansion with its own mall developments in China, but Qin plans to have more than 70 theaters by year's end, 120 in 2012 and 200 cinemas with 1,500 screens by the end of 2013, Qin says, which he hopes will put Stellar second behind Wanda.

To pay for all this, Stellar's Hong Kong-listed affiliate SMI Corp. has raised $100 million through several rounds of sales of shares and convertible notes, and will seek an additional $65 million to $130 million in a third round this year, Qin says, before raising more cash with a planned U.S. listing by next year. Qin's older brother, Qin Hui, owns 66% of SMI--a stake worth $208 million that Qin Hong says the brothers share, along with real estate and other assets that he declines to put a price tag on but says are roughly as valuable as their SMI stake. In earlier days in Beijing, where the brothers were raised, Qin Hong took on more low-key work in the brothers' telecommunications business, while Qin Hui built some of the brothers' early fortune on a Beijing nightclub that has since been shut down by authorities. The elder Qin has receded into the background in recent years after cooperating with investigators in two high-profile corruption cases, but his stamp on the company remains. Some of Qin Hui's unlisted assets are, according to SMI's securities filings, the very movie theaters that the listed SMI has been buying, as the Qins established a cinema-acquisition pipeline.

"In the next three to five years we plan to build even more theaters, to invest in even more films, to make Stellar one of the largest movie companies in China." Qin breaks into a rare, almost imperceptible smile as he modifies his bluster, "The largest private movie business."

The big question mark in the growth of not just media but also any industry in China is the government and its state-owned champions, whose efforts to encroach on, acquire, squeeze out or simply shut down private players come under an intimidating banner: guo jin min tui, "the state advances, the private sector retreats." The biggest state-owned presence in movies, China Film Group, has its own plans for vertical integration, including the addition of dozens of cinemas and an eventual IPO, and has government muscle to make life difficult for competitors.

Stellar has a partnership with China Film in the nation's second-largest theatrical circuit, China Film Stellar, which delivers movies to more than 100 theaters for a small cut of the substantial box office, but it is unclear if the two will cooperate or part ways as their ambitions collide in the years ahead.

The government also aids domestic private players by keeping foreign competitors effectively leashed with strict regulations on film production, importation, distribution and exhibition. Some of these rules are supposed to loosen up as soon as this year under a hard-fought WTO case, but Beijing can be expected to do its best to limit Hollywood's incursions.

In 2002 Warner Brothers began opening multiplex cinemas with some success until the government changed the rules on foreign ownership, leading to Warner's exiting the market in 2006. Along the way, the Time Warner unit helped develop a market that lacked multiplexes. Audience interest and especially content had been lacking in the previous two decades, when the government not only tightly capped film imports but also channeled its entertainment and propaganda investments into television broadcasting, which could reach all homes regardless of income, without a massive venue build-out. Now both state-owned and private companies are building out theaters, bidding up leases in a manner that could threaten the overleveraged.

Ultimately the fuel for Stellar's long-term expansion must come from the box office receipts at its own theaters. China's box office gross could reach $7 billion by 2015, and Qin's goal is to take in 10% of that from Stellar-operated theaters--compared with the 2.6%, or $40 million, Qin says his theaters collected in 2010. continued next post

[GeneChing]

from previous two posts - this is the kicker as it names the moguls.


Page 3 of 3 (http://www.forbes.com/global/2011/0214/companies-mayer-warner-qin-hong-movie-boss_3.html)

Last year Stellar had the 10th- and 16th-highest-grossing theaters in China, according to Artisan Gateway figures, with combined box office receipts of nearly $17 million, and Qin's newest theaters are moving quickly up the rankings. One of them in Beijing was number one nationally in December, says consultancy EntGroup. SMI added four more theaters in January. "We know if we rest, we may be swallowed by others," Qin says. Five years after City of Life and Death he is still rushing to put his money into the movies.

The Moguls

Huayi Brothers

Wang Zhongjun and Wang Zhonglei have a talent agency and the services of blockbuster director Feng Xiaogang, whose earthquake drama Aftershock took in $100 million at the box office in 2010, the record-holder for a domestic film until Let the Bullets Fly passed it in January. Huayi Brothers, which went public in 2009, is valued at more than $1 billion.

Bona Film Group

Yu Dong runs the leading non-state-owned film distributor and has good relations with his former employer, state-owned China Film Group. He owns a small number of theaters but has accelerated his movie production line. Bona's big-budget martial arts epic The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, starring Jet Li, is due out at the end of this year.

Stellar

Qin Hong, 39-year-old chairman of Stellar Megamedia Group and its Hong Kong-listed affiliate SMI Corp., has more theaters than any of the other hitmaking studios. He works with famed director Chen Kaige and up-and-coming star director Lu Chuan, whose City of Life and Death earned $26 million in 2009.

China Film Group

Han Sanping is the government's godfather of Chinese movies. China Film Group does not have a track record of producing hits, but the other moguls seek out producing partnerships with the biggest state-owned player. Huayi's Aftershock, Bona's The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate and Stellar's City of Life and Death all share a co-producer in China Film Group.

Dalian Wanda Group

Wang Jianlin, billionaire chairman of China's commercial-property colossus, has the most movie screens in China. His company has a cinema division that is expected to maintain the lead in theaters and box office receipts as the national box office grows to $7 billion in 2015, but the company has a long way to go to catch up in producing movies.

[GeneChing]

China is on a cinema-building binge (http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/06/business/la-fi-china-cinema-20110306)
The growth in movie theaters is frenetic, with plenty of room for expansion, but it's not clear how much that might help Hollywood.
March 06, 2011|By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Shengzhou, China-- —

LIGHTS, CAMERA, CHINA!
This is the first in a series of occasional reports on China's fast-growing film industry and the opportunities -- and challenges -- it presents for Hollywood.
Not long ago when Zhang Guomiao wanted to see a film, he'd head for the village square. There, itinerant cinema operators would unfurl a canvas screen, set up some static-filled speakers and show a grainy movie in the open air.

"We had to bring our own stools if we wanted to sit," said Zhang, 47, who remembered chickens clucking by his feet and neighbors talking loudly. "You couldn't hear much of the movie."

The cinema-building binge is powered in part by ideology. The Communist government is a major investor in film production, distribution and movie houses. Film is a way to strengthen state influence at home and export Chinese culture abroad.

Movies are "part of a country's soft power," said Han Sanping, the head of state-owned China Film Group.

Still, the main drivers are practical. Unlike in the U.S., where DVD sales can account for as much as 40% of a film's revenue, rampant piracy has forced studios here to depend almost exclusively on domestic box-office receipts. Bankrolling more pictures and boosting profits requires more screens.

Then there's boredom. As Chinese workers grow richer and have more leisure time, they're itching for something to do. The typical ticket costs about $5, slightly less than what many new college graduates earn per day. Still, Chinese movie fans have shown a willingness to pay a premium for better sound, a better picture and swanky venues to hang out with friends.

"There really wasn't much to do here" before the multiplex opened in Shengzhou, said Wang Jinjin, a 24-year-old employee at a local pharmaceutical company. Wang, who earns about $400 a month, said he's visited the theater three times within a few weeks, treating his girlfriend to a ticket, popcorn and bottled water each time. He particularly liked the special effects in Sony Pictures' horror sequel "Resident Evil: Afterlife."

Hollywood movies consistently draw big crowds here and capture upward of 40% of annual ticket sales. Warner Bros.' "Avatar" is the top-grossing film of all time in China, topping $200 million at the box office.

But just how much Hollywood will benefit from China's ambitious cinema expansion remains to be seen.

The Motion Picture Assn. of America has complained for years about strict government limits on the number of foreign films that can be shown in Chinese theaters, which in turn encourages piracy. Warner Bros., a pioneer in cineplex building in China, pulled out in 2006 when Beijing banned majority ownership of cinemas by foreign firms.

The U.S. scored a victory when the World Trade Organization ruled that China must end the government's monopoly on the distribution of imported books, movies and films by March 19. But that ruling said nothing about the film import quota, which remains intact for now.

In the meantime, Chinese movie studios are ramping up cinema construction and trying to boost the quality of homegrown films to keep patrons filling all those new seats. That's a tall order for an industry that churns out a lot more flops than blockbusters. Still, three Chinese productions — "Let the Bullets Fly," a gunslinging action comedy; "Aftershock," about the devastating 1976 Tangshan earthquake; and "If You Are the One 2," a romantic comedy sequel — were smash hits at the box office last year.

And despite Warner Bros.' quick exit from China, some foreign exhibitors see opportunity there. Imax Corp. of Canada plans to triple its presence in China to 300 theaters by 2016. South Korean-owned Lotte plans to have 70 screens in China by the end of the year.

Though about half the theaters in China have some degree of government ownership, the largest cinema developer is privately held Wanda Group, which has doubled its screens to 600 since 2008. With competition growing in China's biggest cities, exhibitors are looking to seize untapped markets in the country's backwaters.

In Shengzhou, a former agricultural center turned manufacturing hub, local authorities determined that the city was ripe for a modern multiplex. Aside from evening strolls, karaoke and card games, there wasn't much for workers to do in the city known as China's necktie capital.

So in 2009, Zhejiang Film Co., which is owned by the provincial government, turned to Pan Xiaming, one of its young managers, to secure a location and oversee construction. The son of tea and sugar-cane farmers, Pan, 28, started at China's fifth-largest cinema chain as a projectionist. The Shengzhou native is so passionate about film that he once traveled 80 miles to the tourist city of Hangzhou to watch "Avatar" in 3-D.

"The whole time I was in the theater, I kept imagining how great it would be to have this in my hometown," Pan said.

Situated in a busy shopping mall, near the city's most expensive town houses, Pan's cineplex — Shengzhou Time Movie World — was an instant success. Pictures including Disney-Pixar's "Toy Story 3" and "Aftershock" played to sold-out crowds on weekends after it opened in the summer.

"It's much better than watching movies off the Internet," said Wang Jiayi, a sporting-goods store clerk who has visited the cinema six times. "You can't feel it off a computer screen."

These days he visits a new seven-screen multiplex outfitted with plush seating, 3-D screens and popcorn imported from the U.S. The rice farmer went with friends to see the best-picture Academy Award nominee "Inception," marveling at the science-fiction thriller's special effects, throbbing soundtrack — and the clean cinema floors.
FOR THE RECORD:
Chinese cinemas: A March 6 article about China's fast-growing cinema industry said the movie "Avatar" was a Warner Bros. film. The movie was released by 20th Century Fox.
"The movie was very hard to understand, but the cinema was very comfortable," Zhang said. "As a farmer, I thought it was very luxurious."

Across China, millions of people like Zhang are experiencing modern cinemas for the first time. State-of-the-art theaters are replacing dilapidated movie houses not only in wealthy urban centers like Beijing and Shanghai but in outposts like Shengzhou in central Zhejiang province, which has grown into a bustling city of about 800,000.

Over the last four years, the number of screens in China has doubled to more than 6,200, a figure that's projected to double again by 2015. Box-office receipts hit a record $1.5 billion last year, according to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

That's still well behind North America, where there are more than 40,000 screens and box-office revenue was $10.6 billion in 2010.Still, China is already considered the world's No. 4 movie market, behind only North America, the European Union and Japan. And with only one screen for every 220,000 Chinese residents, exhibitors have plenty of room to grow.

"China's cinema industry is practically going from two tin cans and string to an iPhone 4 in one fell swoop," said Rance Pow, president of Artisan Gateway, an entertainment consulting firm.

Pan met one family who watched three different movies in a single day. He even persuaded his parents to come. It was the first time they had ever seen a film in a cinema. They wept through a screening of "Aftershock."

"Many people were having their first experience in a cinema," said Pan, whose sober black suits can't disguise his boyish features. "A lot of our customers were in their 50s or older and haven't seen a movie on a big screen in 10 or 20 years. They realized things have changed a lot."

At first glance, Shengzhou Time Movie World could pass for any cineplex in a U.S. suburb. The familiar aroma of buttery popcorn wafts through a carpeted lobby. Movie times are displayed on a large digital screen above ticket clerks in Pepto-Bismol-colored uniforms. Theater seats feature cup holders for jumbo-sized servings of soda.

But alongside the Dove chocolate, Lay's potato chips and Haagen-Dazs ice-cream bars at the concession counter are packs of dried prunes, squid and smelt. Ushers have to remind some patrons to stub out their cigarettes in the smoke-free facility.

At an early-evening screening of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the differences between the Chinese and American moviegoing experiences were clear.

Viewers talked through the entire film, reading subtitles and gleefully sounding out the English dialogue whenever they could.

"Ah, I get it now, they all have magic," said one woman to her companion in an excited voice, some oversharing that carried to the other 50 patrons.

Cellphones rang incessantly. One woman answered her iPhone six times. Someone in the back hocked spit. Not once did anyone complain.

"After all," Pan said, "it's still a village."
I had a squid popsicle at a movie theater near Shaolin Temple once. It was peculiar tasting...

[GeneChing]

from previous post

Once upon a time, it was Hong Kong that cranked out most of the world's kung fu and swordplay movies, notably from the prolific Shaw Brothers studio. But early films weren't especially accessible to Western audiences. Director King Hu's "Come Drink With Me" (1966), which any genre snob will tell you is a seminal masterpiece, begins like a familiar Western. Bandits kidnap the governor's son on a dirt trail, hoping to trade him for their leader, who is in jail. The governor sends a killer called Golden Swallow—his daughter. The gang confronts her in a bar. She wins a sword fight and pays the proprietor for two horses. Then it quickly gets un-Western: the bandits shoot a boy in the eye with a poison dart. Then there's a musical number.

Bruce Lee was able to bridge cultures. Born in San Francisco to globe-trotting parents, he became a child actor in Hong Kong, where he learned kung fu and became a dance champion. He returned to the U.S. at age 19, invented the awesome "1-inch punch" (an extended-arm shoulder shrug), and trained celebrities in "the way of the intercepting fist." His role as Kato in the 1966 TV series "The Green Hornet" led to American success for his Hong Kong-made fight films, beginning with "Fists of Fury." With his ****y smile, come-fight-me hand gestures, and graceful but deadly moves, the chiseled Mr. Lee became an international sex symbol.

"There was physical appeal to him you didn't generally get in traditional representations of Asian men," says Minh-Ha Pham, an assistant professor of Asian studies at Cornell University. "His popularity among African-American and Latino audiences is interesting, too, as a racial underdog during the civil-rights era."

After Mr. Lee died in 1973, Hollywood's attempts to put Western (white) actors in his place fell flat. Messrs. Norris, Seagal and Van Damme were accomplished athletes, but they just seemed ****y out there. Anyway, why is a Chicago cop using Japanese aikido against armed drug dealers, like Mr. Seagal did in "Above the Law"?

"People are like, 'Why is he running around kicking people and no one's shot him yet?' " says Marrese Crump, an American martial artist who is starring in a new film being made in Thailand.

Hollywood auteurs like Mr. Soderbergh are trying to class things up. Of his "Haywire" he says: "I think there's maybe an assumption that if you take someone like Gina [Carano] and put them in a movie, it's going to have the patina of a B-movie. We wanted it to look like a piece of cinema."

In the 1980s, acrobatic Jackie Chan restored the fun by adding slapstick and hit-the-rewind-button stunts, performed without a double. He leaped from a cliff onto a hot-air balloon ("Armour of God") and slid down the outside of a skyscraper ("Who Am I?"). Mr. Chan co-starred with Chris Tucker in the blockbuster "Rush Hour" in 1998, the same year Jet Li made his Hollywood debut in "Lethal Weapon 4."

Other kung fu talent streamed to America in the wake of Hong Kong's 1997 turnover from the British to China. To make "The Matrix" (1999) and its sequels, the Wachowski brothers hired legendary Hong Kong action director Yuen Woo-Ping as a fight choreographer—so Michelle Yeoh's scorpion kick from Mr. Yuen's "Tai-Chi Master" (1993) became Carrie-Anne Moss's scorpion kick in "The Matrix Reloaded" (2003). It reportedly took Ms. Moss six months to learn the move, in which you bring a leg looping up from behind your head, like a scorpion's tail, to bonk someone on the noggin.

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" smashed more barriers in 2000. Director Ang Lee, like Bruce Lee, was multicultural. Born in Taiwan, he'd directed "The Ice Storm" and other American films before "Crouching Tiger" and set out to make a picture that would please both sides of the Pacific. Wire-guided fighters alighting on treetops were wondrous to American audiences, but that was old hat for Mr. Lee, more like an homage. On the DVD commentary for the movie, Mr. Lee and producer/writer James Schamus joke about how they played to Western tastes by starting the movie with scene-setting dialogue instead of fights.

"I kind of feel sorry for the Chinese audience," Mr Lee says. "They have to wait 15 minutes before the action takes off."

Since then China's film business has boomed. Despite restrictions, Chinese box office rose 64% in 2010, to $1.5 billion, and is on track to hit $2 billion this year, already one-fifth of U.S.-Canada revenues, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The aggressive expansion is attracting U.S. filmmakers who want to tap the fast-growing market with China-friendly themes that make government censors happy. It's no coincidence the 2010 "Karate Kid" remake, with Mr. Chan and Jaden Smith, replaces the Japanese karate of the original with Chinese kung fu (Mr. Chan's "Rush Hour 3" had been banned in China, presumably for depicting a Chinese crime family). Films made as co-productions with Chinese companies aren't considered foreign there, so they can skirt the state quota of 20 imports per year. Mr. Reeves's "Man of Tai Chi" is being funded by Australia-based Village Roadshow along with the state-backed China Film Group and Wanda Group, China's largest movie-theater operator.

The Chinese market is large enough that films made there don't need Western appeal to make big money. "The question is, will their industry evolve the way Hong Kong's did, with a focus on exports, or more like India, where the country is so large and the tastes so specific that it's a completely in-country industry?" says Jonathan Wolf, managing director of the American Film Market.

One 2011 Chinese martial-arts film with Western sensibilities is "Wu Xia," from director Peter Chan, which Weinstein Co. signed for U.S. distribution at Cannes (so far there's just a Blu-ray with English subtitles available). Hong Kong superstar Donnie Yen portrays a modest papermaker raising a family in a quiet village—but he may be a vicious killer in hiding! When he displays a bit too much expertise dusting off a pair of thieves, a detective (Takeshi Kaneshiro) starts poking around. The story focuses on character and plot more than many Chinese epics do, and its presentation is modern, using slow-mo fight replays and computer-animated anatomy sequences to illustrate the forensic detective work.

"The Raid" from Indonesia combines SWAT-team-versus-gangster slaughter with a discipline of martial arts called silat. Mr. Evans, the director, who discovered lead actor Iko Uwais while filming a documentary about silat in West Sumatra, explains the technique: "All of the strikes are done with an open palm. You strike with base of your hand, and your fingers are kind of in a claw, so you can immediately grab and pull the person back in, for an extra hit." Sony Pictures bought the American rights to "The Raid" based on 10 minutes of raw footage shown in a Cannes hotel room this spring.

"The Raid" wraps its brutal fighting around an ingenious premise. A crime lord based on the top floor of a building has leased lower floors to various criminals, and the SWAT team must defeat opponents one level at a time before reaching the boss. It's a videogame. Still, Mr. Evans says it took creativity to feature so much martial arts in a movie where everybody is packing heavy artillery.

"We had to find ways we could get weapons to run out of bullets, to break, people to lose helmets," he says. "The first 20 minutes is very gunplay-heavy. We gradually get rid of those guns and move towards nightsticks and knives. Once we lose those, we can go into hand-to-hand combat. We didn't want it to start martial-arts-heavy, because it just wouldn't make sense. I'm hoping that plays well in the U.S."

[GeneChing]

Posted: Sat., Mar. 24, 2012, 4:00am PT
Studio complex puts China in the picture
Huairou Film Base hopes to lure Westerners (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118051848?refcatid=14&printerfriendly=true)
By Clifford Coonan
HUAIROU, CHINA -- About an hour's drive from Beijing, inside a giant studio complex, you'll encounter armies of kung fu specialists being put through their paces by China's top helmers. Or you might see Nationalist Kuomintang soldiers marching through 1920s Shanghai.

Drive through a gate proclaiming "China Film" and there's an arrangement of artillery weapons, all at the disposal of a prospective filmmaker

Welcome to Huairou Film Base, which in a few short years has emerged as the center of Chinese film production, and home to some of the biggest movie projects in this rapidly expanding market.

Following the Chinese government's announcement that it's prepared to open up a bit more to Hollywood by allowing more movies to be imported into China and by giving overseas producers more of the take from films distributed here, the base could well become a major destination for U.S. bizzers.

"This year, we had around 120 feature films, and the rest were TV shows," says Zhang Hongtao, a Huairou spokesman.

The complex, the largest of its kind in Asia, covers 131 acres and cost $294 million to build. It's cleanly landscaped and provides facilities for all aspects of production and post-production with 16 studios, a digital production shop and a prop/costume warehouse.

The facility has provided the famous Ningrong Street for the epic based on the classic novel "A Dream of the Red Chamber," as well as the cave where Mao Zedong lived during China's Civil War.

A visit to the costume warehouse includes some of the light suits from the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in 2008, as well as Gong Li's costume for "Curse of the Golden Flower," day beds with shell inlays, and a real throne used by the Qing Dynasty's Pu Yi, known to Western auds from Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor."

The throne is a gift from the culture ministry.

Since it opened, the fortunes of the facility have reflected the boom in the Chinese film biz. Revenues last year were around one billion yuan ($160 million).

"This is the first stop. All the projects made here come here first," Zhang says. "We organize not only shooting, but also development, catering, hotels and services for producers."

Many of China's most popular recent domestic films, including "Let the Bullets Fly" and "Forever Enthralled," were made here.

Now the studio is looking further afield for future growth.

In a recent coup for Huairou, Keanu Reeves signed on to shoot "Man of Tai Chi," a $32 million contemporary chopsocky and tai chi actioner that will film here. The cast includes Tiger Chen and Karen Mok, with Reeves as a bad guy -- and martial arts choreography by Yuen Woo-ping ("The Matrix").

One of the film's backers is China Film Group, the Chinese state film colossus that is also behind the Huairou Film Base. Other coin comes from Village Roadshow Entertainment Group Asia, Wanda Media and Universal.

The Huairou boom also has benefited the nearby town of Xiantai, whose denizens appear as extras and works as staff for the complex. Lu Hongxu, a 25-year-old law graduate who makes her living guiding people around the site, says Chow Yun-fat is the most famous thesp she's spotted on the base.

The regular employment of 2,000 townspeople is some consolation for the expropriation of their farmland, on which the government built the facility. Just outside the complex, serious high-end homes are going up, including a Netherlands-themed development, replete with a windmill.

And in June, Huairou will open a five-star hotel; in fact, June is the base's official opening, although it's already in use.

Traditionally, post-production on films shot in China has gone to Hong Kong, Australia or to the U.S., but the operators of the base are determined to keep that aspect of the business at Huairou, and are investing heavily to do so. This includes spending $240 million on a "producer headquarters base."

"In the future, we want to get more projects, and we will further train the locals," Zhang says. "This is a studio for producers, with services (ranging all the way) from development to post-production."

And on sound stage 7, there's a replica of a jungle that's not used for films, but rather serves as an indication of how conscious those at Huairou are of tapping into every possible revenue stream for the studio.

The jungle is meant to attract tourists to Huairou's theme park.

Here are the threads on MoTC (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60170) and LtBF (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63205)

[GeneChing]

Aren't all Disney products made in China already?

Disney to join animation initiative with China (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-disney-china-animation-20120411,0,2177714.story?track=icymi)
Disney will offer its expertise in areas such as story writing and market research to help develop local Chinese talent, the company said in a statement.
By David Pierson and Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times
April 11, 2012

BEIJING — Walt Disney Co. said it would join an initiative to develop China's animation industry, marking the latest push by Hollywood to expand into the world's most populous country.

The agreement announced Tuesday unites the Burbank entertainment giant with an animation arm of China's Ministry of Culture and China's largest Internet company, Tencent Holdings Ltd.

China's government has identified animation as a key area for development to boost the country's global influence, or "soft power." The interest in animation is due in part to the success of DreamWorks Animation's "Kung Fu Panda" franchise, which sparked wide debate within China about why the country can't leverage its culture as effectively as Hollywood.

Disney's China partnership echoes DreamWorks Animation's announcement of a joint venture with Shanghai Media Group, China's second-largest media company, to build a family entertainment company to produce animated and live action movies and TV shows for the Chinese market. That deal was unveiled in February when Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping visited Los Angeles.

Disney said it would offer its expertise in areas such as story writing and market research to help develop local Chinese talent, the company said in a written statement.

"Our philosophy is to operate as the Chinese Walt Disney Company and as such will remain front and center to help local creative talent realize their dreams and help to create one of the most dynamic original animation industry sectors in the world," Stanley Cheung, managing director of Disney China, said in the statement.

Andy Bird, chairman of Walt Disney International, said: "Disney's involvement builds on our expertise and long-term commitment to nurture the local original animation industry."

Disney is currently building its first theme park in mainland China, a $3.7-billion attraction in Shanghai slated to open in 2015. The company also operates a network of English-language schools in China. Disney has had less success getting a dedicated television channel approved in the country, considered a vital part of its marketing strategy.

Although details on the partnership were sketchy, analysts described it as a potentially significant step by a major media conglomerate to build its footprint in China, which was the fastest-growing market for movie ticket sales in 2011, with $2 billion in box-office revenue.

"It's a big deal that they're doing this," said Ron Diamond, publisher of AWN.com, an online animation magazine. "You're taking America's creative brand and bringing it into a culture that has a long history of storytelling and is hungry to spend. This is a big opportunity for China and for Disney."

Stanley Rosen, professor of political science at USC and an expert on China, said healthy competition between Disney and DreamWorks — two studios with a long history of rivalry — may have played a part in the deal and fits China's long-term strategy of becoming a player in the global animation business, he said.

"Right now [the Chinese] need expertise in terms of telling stories, using technology and doing animation," Rosen said. "This is a way for the Chinese to succeed overseas."

The venture is the latest move by studios and production companies to mine China's vast market. Last year, Glendale-based DreamWorks signed a deal with online video site Youku.com to distribute the studio's popular "Kung Fu Panda" movies in China. Beverly Hills-based Real Inc. also has partnered with Beijing SAGA Luxury Cinema Management Co. to equip the Chinese theater chain with 3-D technology. Imax Corp., the Canadian big-screen theater company, also formed a joint venture with China's largest cinema operator, Wanda Cinema Line Corp., to open 75 theaters by 2014.

Many studios and independent film producers and distributors are hoping to capitalize on a recently negotiated trade agreement with China that significantly eased restrictions on distributing movies in the country. The accord increases the number of foreign movies allowed into China under its current quota system and gives foreign studios a larger slice of box-office revenue.

[GeneChing]

The underlying implications are intriguing.

AMC Said to Be Talking to Chinese Buyer (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/business/media/amc-said-to-be-talking-sale-to-wanda-group-of-china.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&ref=business&adxnnlx=1336755814-jod+GiFTRoePXnJajr0fQA)
By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
Published: May 7, 2012

LOS ANGELES — AMC Entertainment, which owns the second-largest movie theater chain in North America, is in talks to sell the company or a significant stake in it to the Wanda Group, one of China’s largest theater owners, according to people briefed on the discussions.

The Loews AMC Theater on 34th Street in Manhattan in March. AMC is the second-largest theater chain in America.

If completed, the deal will begin a new phase in China’s push into the global film industry by sharply increasing its leverage with Hollywood and creating the first theater chain to have a commanding presence in the world’s two largest movie markets.

The people who described the discussions spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private and not finished. The off-and-on negotiations, they said, began more than a year ago, then became more serious in recent weeks, as AMC scrapped plans for a stock offering that would have raised as much as $450 million.

AMC has been owned since 2004 by an investment group that includes the Apollo Investment Fund, J. P. Morgan Partners, Bain Capital Investors, the Carlyle Group and others. Apollo and its founder, Leon D. Black, also had a major stake in the chain before it was sold eight years ago for about $1.7 billion to a group in which Apollo and J. P. Morgan are the largest holders, with about 39 percent each.

Neither Gerardo I. Lopez, AMC’s chief, nor a company spokesman responded to queries. A spokesman for Apollo declined to comment. A representative for Wanda in China was not immediately available.

Any deal, whether for the entire company or for a major stake, would probably put a current value of roughly $1.5 billion on AMC. That figure is based on its reported cash flow of about $181 million for the 52 weeks ended Sept. 29 and an industry expectation that theater chains in the United States will continue to sell for as much as eight times their annual cash flow.

For AMC’s investors, a recent spike in ticket sales may present an opportunity to cash out an investment that has been in place longer than is usual for hedge-fund money and to invest in businesses with more growth potential.

Wanda’s interest in AMC comes as China has been rushing headlong into new business alliances with American movie companies, as it seeks to double the contribution to its economy from entertainment and media in the next five years.

Wanda, a conglomerate whose interests include commercial properties, luxury hotels and department stores, is involved with film production and distribution in China. It operates a rapidly growing theater chain that now has 86 multiplex locations, and a total of 730 screens, including 47 large-format Imax screens.

On its Web site, Wanda says it accounts for about 15 percent of China’s movie ticket sales, which were about $2.1 billion last year. Wanda has said that by 2015 it plans to more than double its screen count to about 2,000.

Founded in 1920 by three brothers with a single Missouri theater, AMC, based in Kansas City, later was a leader in building complexes to show more than one movie at a time. It now operates about 350 theaters with 5,050 screens. (The biggest theater chain is Regal Entertainment, which has 522 theaters with 6,580 screens.) AMC is known for having better locations than some of its rivals, which include Cinemark, the third-largest chain. Six of last year’s 10 top-grossing theaters belonged to AMC.

In the United States, the major movie studios are largely barred from owning theaters under federal consent decrees that long ago broke up an integrated system under which the majors were able to produce, distribute and exhibit their own films.

After the breakup, theater chains became the direct customer for studio movies. The theaters sell tickets to those movies, splitting the proceeds with the distributor under deals that are often fiercely negotiated.

Last year, however, AMC expanded into movie acquisition. It joined with Regal to form Open Road Films, which buys and distributes the kind of midbudget pictures that studios have started to neglect in favor of megabudget film franchises. Open Road releases have included “The Grey,” an action drama starring Liam Neeson that took in $51.6 million earlier this year.

AMC and the other big theater chains are experiencing an upswing because of blockbusters like “The Hunger Games” and “The Avengers,” which took in $207.4 million over the weekend to set an opening record. Ticket sales in North America for the year to date total $3.6 billion, a 16 percent increase from the same period a year ago, according to analysts. Attendance is up 18 percent to about 456 million.

But the last few years have been extremely difficult for theater operators. Last year, attendance in North America fell to 1.28 billion, a 4 percent decline from 2010 and the lowest total in 16 years. Ticket revenue for last year totaled $10.2 billion, a 3 percent decrease.

Chinese theatergoers have shown a taste for effects-laden American fantasies and action films like “Avatar” and “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.”

On the flip side, Chinese-made films have made little impression in the North American market, which remains five times the size of China’s, though people briefed on the current deal say Wanda’s ownership of theaters here might create a pipeline for Chinese films in the United States.

[GeneChing]

China's Wanda to pay $2.6bn for AMC (http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/chinas-wanda-to-pay-26bn-for-amc)
By Patrick Frater
Mon, 21 May 2012, 14:00 PM (HKT)

Confirming weeks of rumours, it was today announced that Chinese property and cinema group Dalian Wanda Group Co Ltd 大連萬達集團股份有限公司 will pay $2.6 billion to acquire AMC Entertainment Inc, the second largest cinema circuit in North America.

The move, which is subject to regulatory approval, will create the world's largest cinema group. AMC currently operates 346 theatres with 5,034 screens primarily in the US and Canada (these include of 5,034 screens, including 2,336 3-D screens and 128 IMAX screens). Wanda has 86 theatres and a total of 730 screens in China as well as large-scale stage show, film production and distribution, entertainment chains.

Both companies are privately held, with AMC currently owned by private equity groups Apollo Global Management, Bain Capital, the Carlyle Group, CCMP Capital Advisors and Spectrum Equity Investors. Upon closing of the transaction, AMC will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Wanda.

"This acquisition will help make Wanda a truly global cinema owner, with theatres and technology that enhance the movie-going experience for audiences in the world's two largest movie markets. Wanda has a deep commitment to investing in the entertainment business and is already the largest in this sector in China, with more than $1.6 billion invested in cultural and entertainment activities since 2005," WANG Jianlin 王健林, chairman and president of Wanda.

"The time has never been more opportune to welcome the enthusiastic support of our new owners. Wanda and AMC are both dedicated to providing our customers with a premier entertainment experience and state-of-the-art amenities and share corporate cultures focused on strategic growth and innovation," said Gerry Lopez, CEO and president of AMC,

Wanda says it intends to invest up to an additional $500 million to fund AMC's strategic and operating initiatives.it also said that the deal is not expected to have any significant impact on AMC's 18,500 staff. Its operational HQ will remain in Kansas.



Kung Fu Wanda: China gets Hollywood makeover (http://rt.com/business/news/china-us-historic-deal-amc-dalian-wanda-808/)
Published: 21 May, 2012, 19:54
RIA Novosti/Aleksey Kudenko

North America’s second-largest movie theater chain has been bought by a Chinese company in a takeover that will create the world's biggest movie theater operator.

*AMC Entertainment Holdings was sold for $2.6 billion to the Dalian Wanda Group, with the Beijing-based company saying it will invest an additional $500 million in AMC's development.

While Wanda has his eyes set on Hollywood, Hollywood is shifting its focus to China.

The Chinese film market is booming with the rise of the middle class, causing US cinema productions to make decisions that favor Chinese audiences.

For example, Iron Man 3 will be filmed in China, guaranteeing the film will get a Chinese screening.

China has a quota for foreign films that can be released in the country. Even if a film passes through this restricting thoroughfare of 20 films a year, it must then pass the hurdles of censorship. However, Hollywood has already found a way around this by partnering with Chinese companies.

Given the success of Kung Fu Panda, Dreamworks announced a joint venture in February, Oriental Dreamworks, in order to develop in China. They are keeping 45 per cent in the company, while China Media Capital, Shanghai Media Group and Shanghai Alliance Investment will co-own the production company.

Since the US has dibs on the Chinese market, it was only fair and a matter of time before the Chinese made their big introduction, competing with the US cinema market.

The agreement gives Wanda access to the North American and Chinese movie markets, the world’s two largest. The US box-office had $10.2 billion in ticket sales last year, while China’s box office brought in more than $2 billion.

"This acquisition will help make Wanda a truly global cinema owner, with theaters and technology that enhance the movie-going experience for audiences in the world’s two largest movie markets," stated Wang Jianlin, chairman and president of Wanda.

The goal of developing technologically in filmmaking is shared by Yang Bu Ting, Chairman of China Mainstream National Film Capital Hollywood Group. He announced at a conference his broader objectives for opening an office in Beverly Hills. They hope to glean from their US counterparts’ techniques for distributing and developing visual effects and computer-generated imagery.

As Wanda also produces and distributes films besides owning theatres, American executives privately predict he might use his new American cinemas as a venue for releasing Chinese-made films in the US.

However, at the present, Wanda claims he has no intention of distributing movies in the US. The Wanda-AMC deal is currently awaiting approval by authorities in both the United States and China.
Wow. Well, at least I know one point in my next Chollywood Rising print column now.

[GeneChing]

The new movie mogul

China Film Player Reveals Efforts to End Censorship (Q&A) (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wang-jianlin-amc-wanda-china-censorship-340290)
8:39 PM PDT 6/20/2012 by Patrick Brzeski

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/2012/05/wang_jianlin_-_p_2012.jpg
Wang Jianlin, chairman of Beijing-based Wanda Group, talks with THR about his recent purchase of AMC Entertainment, his admiration for Hollywood and why China needs to rethink the way it regulates film content.

Wang Jianlin’s story is one of the great rags-to-obscene-riches sagas of contemporary China. As a boy he endured the brutal deprivations of the Cultural Revolution; as a teen he joined the Chinese military; and when he later dropped out, having never finished high school, he went on to found a small private real estate business that would grow into a $35 billion conglomerate, employing 50,000 people, with holdings in shopping malls, office towers, luxury hotels, and Chinese entertainment outlets.

Now, the 57-year-old Wang -- China’s sixth-richest individual, according to the Harun China Rich List -- also is the proud new owner of AMC Entertainment, North America’s second-largest cinema chain. In a deal announced in late May, Wang’s Beijing-based Dalian Wanda Group acquired AMC for an estimated $2.6 billion, with $500 million allocated for direct investment and upgrades in AMC’s theaters. Adding AMC’s existing 5,034 screens to Wanda’s 730 in China (with a goal in place for 2,000 screens by 2015), Wang’s company is now the biggest film exhibitor on the planet.

In China, he’s regarded as one of the true visionaries of his generation. But his big buy into North American exhibition, where ticket sales declined by 4 percent last year, generally has been appraised as a risky bet by the international business commentariat.

In a frank conversation from his Beijing headquarters, Wang spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about his next big buys in the Western entertainment world, the hands-off approach he plans to take toward managing AMC and why China must reform its censorship regime if the country’s film industry is ever to compete on the global stage.

The Hollywood Reporter: You’ve mentioned in recent interviews that you’re interested in making further investments in movie studios, film production and live entertainment. What are your ambitions in this area?

Wang Jianlin: We don’t have concrete plans for movie co-productions with any Hollywood studios yet, but since the AMC merger and acquisition announcement, we’ve come around to this idea of working with big studios from Hollywood for film production. Eventually we plan to do that. For Wanda’s film production business at home, our target is to be among the top three in China within the next three years. But in regards to oversees production and related industries, we don’t currently have any set plans.

THR: We’ve heard that Europe is the next market you’re looking to buy into. Can you share some details about your plans and ambitions there? What are you pursuing?

Wang: Well, the first prerequisite is the successful transaction of the AMC deal. As you know, the AMC acquisition must first get the approval of the relevant American authorities. We’re going to seek to acquire one or two European theater circuits, but only after the successful closing of the AMC deal. Right now we’re holding some discussions with European theater chains, but because of confidentiality agreements, I can’t give you names yet.

THR: More generally, why have you chosen to target the global entertainment sector with Wanda’s considerable resources?

Wang: As you know, Wanda Group started by developing shopping centers, and at that time -- about 10 years ago -- movie theaters in China were run by state-owned companies. There were no cross-provincial companies running theaters. So it was at this point in time, with this opportunity in mind, that we first started our film and entertainment business. Right now, for our investments in culture industries, we’re pursuing five areas: film exhibition, film production, stage shows, chain entertainment outlets such as karaoke centers and, lastly, fine art collecting. Wanda is currently the largest private investor in the Chinese culture industry. Why? Because it’s good business. By the end of 2012, our revenue from our culture and entertainment investments will amount to $3.5 billion. Our target for the end of 2015 is $6 billion.

THR: What specific factors motivated you to acquire AMC Entertainment?

Wang: There were two main considerations. The first was to accelerate the expansion of Wanda’s theater circuit abroad. We want to be a global film exhibitor, and to develop this infrastructure on our own would take a very long time. Through the M&A, we could achieve this feat very quickly. Secondly, as you know and as others have said, considering the U.S. market alone, the rate of return on this kind of M&A is comparatively low. However, Wanda’s cinema business is seeking an IPO soon, and we’re expecting certain approval of our application. Following the IPO, we’re estimating that through renovation and remodeling of AMC’s theaters over the next one to two years, we’ll be able to generate profits. And we would like to put that into Chinese assets so as to generate its profits in a Chinese kept market.

THR: It’s been reported that Wanda-AMC is looking to show a more diverse lineup of content in AMC cinemas -- more Spanish and Bollywood programming has been mentioned -- and that Wanda’s $500 million investment will help make this possible. Are you interested in showing more Chinese content in AMC theaters as well? Is that a priority or a goal?

Wang: For Wanda itself, we don’t currently have any plans or a structure in place to export Chinese films. Whether AMC cinemas will show more Chinese films will be totally up to AMC’s current management, which we intend to leave intact, responding to market demand.

THR: Are you a big movie fan yourself? What kind of films and entertainment do you enjoy?

Wang: I’m actually not much of a movie fan. [Laughs.] Although I’m heavily invested in the movie theater business now, I seldom go to the cinema myself -- I’m a pretty busy person. I’ve only seen a couple of movies from the U.S. recently: Titanic and Kung Fu Panda, both in Imax and 3D.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

THR: The Financial Times recently reported that you eschew Hollywood fare because of its lack of “traditional Chinese morality.” Is it going to be uncomfortable for you if some of the films showing in your cinemas, both in China and the U.S., could be perceived as not particularly “moral”?

Wang: No, that report must have been mistaken. On the contrary, I very much admire and support Hollywood movies -- particularly the big ones. I find them very impressive, and they usually show a very positive attitude about life -- they capture some of the beauty of life and a sense of its true value. It’s actually Chinese movies that I often find unsatisfactory. I often don’t see much value in them.

THR: About that -- how do you assess the current state of the Chinese movie industry?

Wang: In my view, our culture and entertainment industry is still pretty immature. Its share of the world market and its share of the Chinese GDP is very, very small. That’s the reason that our government stipulated a very providential policy last year for developing this sector over the next 10 years. There have been a number of policies concerning laws and taxation introduced to encourage our entertainment industry. So I’m looking forward to a golden era sometime in the next 10 to 20 years in the development of Chinese culture and entertainment.

THR: What do you think is holding back the Chinese film industry? What needs to occur for Chinese filmmakers to compete with Hollywood on the world stage?

Wang: From my observations, there are three things holding back the Chinese industry. The first thing is lack of attention from the government and private enterprise. In recent years, we’ve attached great importance to the country’s economic development through core industries, while mostly ignoring culture and entertainment. The second reason has to do with the investors themselves. Before, our major investors in entertainment were just small and medium-size enterprises. There were no deep-pocketed investors like Wanda active in the industry. So that constrained the size of investment and the level of quality Chinese film production and entertainment could achieve. The last factor is our comparatively strict censorship system for film production and publication. These are the biggest factors that have been holding us back. But I think we’ve begun to acknowledge these issues and are now proposing solutions. Right now, as I mentioned, the Chinese government has attached great importance and has held many meetings and produced influential papers supporting the development of culture and entertainment. We need to attract more of China’s biggest enterprises to join this industry and make big investments, such as Wanda is doing. Thirdly, I think we should lose the censorship and approval system of film production and publication.

THR: Lose the censorship? Do you think that there’s a good chance that will actually happen?

Wang: It’s absolutely possible. There’s a chance.

THR: In your view, how has the censorship and approval process in China been hindering the industry?

Wang: A censorship system in general is not a problem. Many countries have a censorship system of some kind; the U.S. has its rating system. The problem with our system is that there is only one authority -- the film bureau [the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television] -- with a small number of people who are in charge of the approval of all films, which takes a long time. And some of these people will shoulder different ideas, so the directors will have to correct or make changes to their artistic vision, based on the opinion of a small number of so-called experts. This has severely held back the development of our film industry. I’ve proposed that we have to decentralize the censorship process and assign it to local, provincial governments. If we let different provincial governments handle the approval of various films, we can learn what works from the various instances and films. If that can be achieved, I believe the film industry of China can prosper.
Lose censorship in China? Seriously?

[GeneChing]

It has begun. Tomorrow two Chinese films are being distributed via AMC:

Flying Swords at Dragon Gate (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57723) has a one-week run in 3D IMAX at 15 theaters

The Bullet Vanishes (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1185510) is also opening, but I don't know for how long or in how many theaters yet.

[GeneChing]

I'm excited for TC0 (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=62429) & CZ (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53875)

Huayi thinks big (http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/huayi-thinks-big)
By Stephen Cremin
Thu, 13 September 2012, 12:05 PM (HKT)

China's Huayi Brothers Pictures Co Ltd 華誼兄弟影業投資有限公司 has expanded their partnership with IMAX Corporation to digitally remaster seven forthcoming films in the large screen format.

Huayi previously released FENG Xiaogang 馮小剛's Aftershock 唐山大地震 (2010) in IMAX in July 2010, which contributed to its — at the time — record-breaking RMB665 million (US$105 million) box office.

Feng's new film, wartime drama Back to 1942 一九四二, is among the new titles being converted. Although no opening date has been announced, Huayi confirmed that it will release the historical epic this year.

The new IMAX lineup launches with martial arts fantasy Tai Chi Zero 太極１　從零開始 on 27 Sep, followed by Tai Chi Hero 太極２　英雄崛起 on 25 Oct and Jackie CHAN 成龍's Chinese Zodiac 十二生肖 on 20 Dec.

Three yet to be announced films will also be presented in IMAX format.

The new deal was announced by IMAX Corp CEO Richard GELFOND (pictured right) and Huayi's president James WANG Zhonglei 王中磊 (pictured left) at Beijing's CBD Wanda IMAX Theater yesterday.

[GeneChing]

This is a good overview of who Wanda is.

Timeline of Wanda's expansion in cultural industry (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-01/03/content_16078829.htm)
Updated: 2013-01-03 07:56
By Liu Wei ( China Daily)

Wanda Cultural Industry Group has been nicknamed "a flagship of China's cultural industry" since the day it was founded on Dec 1, because of its scale, assets, variety of businesses and potential.

It has an ambitious blueprint that covers various ventures, including its art collection, movie productions, distribution and exhibition, stage show, theme parks and film bases.

Wanda has proved its foresight in the cultural sector by its success in film industry since it entered the business seven years ago. At present, its cinema line is the most powerful among Chinese film exhibitors.

Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Collection (the late 1980s)

Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin is a veteran art collector known for his insight and generosity. China Entrepreneur Magazine revealed that as early as 1992 he could spend 8 million yuan ($1.27 million) on a work by Fu Baoshi, a modern Chinese painter who died in 1965.

Insiders say Wanda's art collection could stock a museum. According to the company's website, the group focuses on collecting paintings and calligraphic work by famous modern and contemporary Chinese artists, and has owned roughly 1,000 pieces valued at 10 billion yuan in total.

Cinemas (2005)

Wanda owns the largest cinema chain in Asia and the second-largest in North America. It has 86 five-star cineplexes in China, most of which are located in downtown areas of cities across the mainland. It also owns the most IMAX screens in China. Among its 1,000 screens, approximately 50 are IMAX. Wanda Cinema Line holds around 15 percent of the market share in China.

In September, it completed acquisition of AMC Entertainment and its 5,048 screens in North America.

Media (2007)

Wanda purchased Popular Cinema, which was China's most popular movie magazine in the 1990s but was struggling to survive the fierce market competition until Wanda acquired it this year. Wanda also has interests in China Times, a weekly business & finance magazine, and Global Business, a monthly magazine.

Film and Television Bases (2009)

Wanda is building a film and television production base in Dalian, Northeast China.

Karaoke (2010)

Wanda owns 45 "Superstar" karaoke centers nationwide and plans to have 130 by 2015, making it the largest operation of its kind in China.

Theme Parks and Resorts (2010)

Wanda plans to build world's leading theme parks in Beijing, Dalian in Northeast China and Xishuangbanna in the southwestern province of Yunnan. The construction of the Dalian park is expected to be completed in 2015. The Xishuangbanna park will start construction soon. The Beijing theme park, tentatively named Dreamchasing City, is located in the eastern district of Tongzhou and is scheduled to open in 2016.

The group is also building a recreational park, involving film production and technology, in Wuhan.

Stage Show (2010)

Wanda has a joint venture with the Franco Dragone Entertainment Group in the US and will invest $1.6 billion to launch five stage shows in Wuhan, Dalian, Sanya and other cities. The Wuhan show will premiere in 2014.

Film and Television Production (2011)

The company's website notes that the group invested $80 million to found the Film & TV Production Company in 2011. It has produced or distributed a small number of works this year, but plans to make more than 10 movies or television works annually after 2013.

Some of the company's better-known projects include the production and distribution of The Warring States in 2011, starring veteran Sun Honglei and newcomer Jing Tian, the distribution of Taiwan director Wei Te-sheng's epic Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale in May, and the production of a romantic feature called Holding Love, starring Yang Mi and Liu Kaiwei, in June.

[GeneChing]

This sums up the story so far quite nicely.

Lost in translation (http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/lost-in-translation)
By Patrick Frater
Thu, 28 March 2013, 10:30 AM (HKT)

Many headlines over the past year have marvelled at the growth of the Chinese film industry – the box office records, the number of new cinemas opened each day and its blow for blow tussle with Hollywood.

So when international critics and buyers got a chance to see Lost in Thailand 人再囧途之泰囧, China's low budget box office miracle, at last month's Berlin film market they rushed in. They emerged bemused by a comedy which is slick and competently made, but is very parochial in its subject and humour, and which has minimal appeal outside China's borders.

The reviewers' disappointment is typical of an older dichotomy, namely how to sell Chinese films abroad while also building an industry at home. The problem may become more acute before it is resolved.

While box office in China has grown very substantially, some 30% in each of the last two years, making the country now the number two theatrical market behind North America, exports of Chinese film has waned. According to the State Administration of Radio, Film & Television (SARFT) 國家廣播電影電視總局, the overseas box office of Chinese films dropped by 49% in 2012.


Changing Export Markets

European buyers warmed to Chinese and other Asian films in the early part of the century when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 臥虎藏龍 (2000) singlehandedly blasted out a new market. Distributors and audiences worldwide tuned in to Chinese costume action films and settings and were able to ignore the traditional hurdles of subtitles or unfamiliar stars that normally make such films a tricky sell.

It was followed by In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2000) albeit in a different genre, which broke BO records in territories including the UK, then by Hero 英雄 (2002) and House of Flying Daggers 十面埋伏 (2004). Hong Kong's Infernal Affairs 無間道 (2002) trilogy also kept Cantonese language films in buyers' minds.

The success of these films helped Sony/Columbia open a production office in Hong Kong and encouraged other producers and stars to cash in by delivering the next film in the vein of Crouching Tiger. There were some unhappy knock offs such as Flying Dragon, Leaping Tiger 龍騰虎躍 (2001) and Roaring Dragon, Bluffing Tiger (aka Heroes on Fire 南國風雲 (2000)).

The boom occurred at a time video was still strong and provided robust ancillary market support following theatrical releases. Video and DVD sales have since tumbled in Europe and North America – major retail chains HMV and Tower Records went bust as a result – and have not been fully replaced by paid-for online sales.

Collapsing video, global economic recession and the revival of local films in some territories has meant that distributors are no longer keen to acquire as many Chinese films as they were in the early 2000s.

"We simply don't buy as many Chinese films as we did in the Contender days," says Jo Sweby, who previously headed acquisitions at UK genre video label Contender Entertainment Group before she and Contender joined multinational distributor Entertainment One (eOne). Similarly, Showbox Media Group, a rival UK video group which used to be a mainstay, has not bought a Chinese film for two years.

The problem of changing markets is not one uniquely faced by Chinese films. "International markets are increasingly difficult, because output deals and co-productions leave little room for indie or foreign fare," says Albert LEE 利雅博, CEO of Emperor Motion Pictures Ltd 英皇電影有限公司, which as a producer straddles Hong Kong and China and is also a Hong Kong distributor. And many local Asian film industries have succeeded in growing the domestic share of their home markets.

But the failure of Chinese films to connect in international sales markets is significant considering how many film funds in the pre-financial crash period were posited on slates of new Crouching Tigers and the idea of Chinese films becoming a global currency.

In particular, the North American market, which was rarely the most lucrative for Chinese films, but was often the most symbolic, has changed dramatically.

Several indie distributors such as Magnolia and IFC have scaled back on theatrical releasing, in favour of ventures into premium-video-on-demand and ultra-VoD (showing on video before theatrical). Other Asian specialists in North America ImaginasianTV, Tokyopop and Indomina Releasing have closed their distribution arms. Similarly, the Hollywood studios, have slashed their buying of Asian titles, and many Chinese titles have waited in vain for a deal.

Well Go USA Inc remains a traditional distributor that opens titles aimed at cross-over audiences in theatrical release ahead of other windows, though it actually makes more than 70% of its revenues from old fashioned DVD sales. Rival, China Lion Film Distribution Inc seeks the Chinese diaspora audiences and wherever possible gives its titles day-and-date outings at the same time as their China or Hong Kong releases.

US exhibition giant, AMC Entertainment Inc, which is now owned by Chinese property and cinemas giant Wanda, has itself also put a toe into the US distribution arena. It acquired and released Lost In Thailand in Feb 2013 (grossing just $57,000 in its first two weeks) and is aiming for two releases per year.

"There are several factors that have [negatively] affected box office revenue of Chinese films in the US," says Well Go CEO Doris PFARDRESCHER. "VoD has become an easy way to watch movies, especially with theatrical and video windows shrinking. Second, genre. Chinese films that do well in the US are martial arts action, however the films that are currently doing well in Chinese territories are comedies, romance and fantasy films – all of which have a hard time translating overseas."

"It is not necessarily true that the market-ability of Chinese film is declining. At China Lion our BO in 2012 was up 100% over 2011," says China Lion founder, Milt BARLOW, who left the company earlier this month. "The real issue is there is still not enough focus from Chinese studios and sales agents to get a meaningful US release up and running. With piracy as our top competitor for Asian American audiences in North America, if we are not day-and-date with Asian home countries then the film is dead. And let's get real, mainstream Western audiences do not want to see these films."


continued next post

[GeneChing]

We're very pleased to be working with Well Go USA now. The have bought our topmost banner to promote Bangkok Revenge (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=64334) and Muay Thai Warrior (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=58512), as well as supplied several prizes for our sweepstakes (http://www.kungfumagazine.net/index.html). I encourage you to support them.



Genre Identity

The kind of movies Chinese film-makers are serving up is an equally tricky issue. They are widely seen as too parochial or formulaic.

Mainland China's censorship system, which makes certain subjects taboo, and on the other hand requires every film to be acceptable for general release – China does not have a rating or classification system like most other countries – is blamed by film-makers and overseas distributors alike for narrowing the range of films being made.

Producers including Edko Films Ltd 安樂影片有限公司's Bill KONG 江志強 and Lion Rock Productions 獅子山製作有限公司's Terence CHANG 張家振 say that such restrictions mean that they are unable to make contemporary thrillers for the mainland market, though they do so from Hong Kong instead. (Kong was last year responsible for Cold War 寒戰 which was released in China and achieved over $40 million at the box office.)

"Filmmaking is all about genres and having a strong antagonist. Without the bad guy, the good guy has nothing to do, but it's hard to make contemporary movies because crime today won't pass censorship," mainland director CHEN Daming 陳大明 has said.

EMP's Lee sums up the sales agent's dilemma. "Chinese comedy doesn't travel. Action films are beaten by US films for special effects. Drama needs stars and we don't have them. And historical martial arts is over-exposed," he says.

Scholars such as Film Business Asia's chief critic Derek ELLEY argue that today's 700 title per year output from China is far more cutting edge and innovative than it is given credit for. Supposedly taboo subjects such as ghosts and time travel are indeed making it on screen. China even enjoyed its first monster action adventure Million Dollar Crocodile 百萬巨鰐 last year.

But perceptions are hard to change and Chinese film may remain stuck until sales agents and marketers actively promote China's diversity and use international platforms such as festivals to do so. "I don't need to see any more glorifications of Chinese history. I'm surprised these films still have any success with Chinese audiences. It is no surprise that Chinese film exports are dropping," says Christoph TERHECHTE, head selector at the Berlin International Film Festival's Forum section.

While China's domestic market remains so robust there is little incentive to make huge efforts to curry international favour.

"Chinese companies have no idea about international sales. That's because they are so strongly focussed on their home market. It is like Japan in the 1970s," says EMP's Lee. "China is our opportunity. We should actually redeploy staff from our international side to the China operations," says Lee. "And in fact we are already doing so."

There are exceptional films,which enjoy sales success. But they are few. "The China market has evolved into such a monster that [mainland China] films don't travel either in Asia or the rest of the world. Lost In Thailand is an example," says LIM Teck 林德, head of Clover Films Pte Ltd, a Singapore distributor, which has now begun making its own Chinese-language movies.

"[Jackie CHAN 成龍's] CZ12 十二生肖 is one of the rare Chinese films that did connect – it did well in China and broke records around Asia. The challenge is to balance local and international needs – to find the next CZ12."

Others point to a factor that even the censors cannot be blamed for: mood. "Chinese movies have become very dark, there is rarely a transcendent hero," says producer and Chinese film commentator Bey LOGAN. "The Warlords 投名狀 (2007), Bodyguards and Assassins 十月圍城 (2009), The Guillotines 血滴子 and Back to 1942 一九四二 were not fun. The Last Supper 王的盛宴 was also very dark. Its director LU Chuan 陸川 tells me that's the darkness in Chinese people's soul. But that's why people can be turned off. It's also why the Ip Man 葉問 (2008) films were well regarded. They are simple stories of individual heroism that are well told.

Technical Factors

Technical, industry-specific factors may also hinder Chinese films from punching at their full weight in international markets.

"It is difficult for foreign distributors to programme and market Chinese films because they have so little forward certainty over the date of release," says Infernal Affairs producer Nansun SHI 施南生. "That gives problems with censorship and materials."

In the longer term history and economics may anyway work in China's favour. A decade from now the picture may be one where other Chinese firms have followed Wanda Media Co Ltd 萬達影視傳媒有限公司's example and acquired their own stakes in Hollywood, and one in which foreign firms like Village Roadshow Pictures Asia Ltd 威秀電影亞洲有限公司 and Fox International Productions are fully embedded in Chinese production.

Already, these companies' films like Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons 西游　降魔篇 and Hot Summer Days 全城熱戀熱辣辣 (2010), have put Chinese audiences and tastes first and made money locally for their backers. International sales are simply treated as a bonus.

[GeneChing]

120 IMAXs in China. Wow.

Everything is in place. Now all Wanda has to do is deliver some international blockbusters.


China's Wanda Pushing Film Credentials With 'The Palace' (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chinas-wanda-pushing-film-credentials-604853)
5:14 AM PDT 8/13/2013 by Clifford Coonan

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/2012/06/wang_a.jpg
Wang Jianlin, chairman of Wanda Group and China's second richest individual
The conglomerate, whose chairman Wang Jialin is China's second richest individual, wants to be a major player in the cultural industries as well as a real estate giant.

Wanda Media, the production and distribution arm of Chinese real estate conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, is stepping up its efforts to become a major player in the "cultural industries" with the opening of costume drama The Palace.

The movie is a love story set during the Qing Dynasty and features Zhou Dongyu, who made a big splash for her role in Zhang Yimou’s Under The Hawthorn Tree, and also features Lu Yi, Zhao LIying and Chen Xiao.

The movie was directed by Pan Anzi and opens in China today.

In May of last year, Wanda bought the North America's second-largest theater chain, AMC Entertainment, for $2.6 billion to create the world's biggest cinema owner, and the group is keen to exploit the distribution synergies that the acquisition offers.

For the next three years, the company plans to distribute nine films and produce eight annually.

"With the support of Wanda Group, the company is also seeking to set up slate financing agreements with major Hollywood studios to get the financing and distribution rights for China, while also seeking to co-produce films with international companies," the group said in a statement.

Among Wanda Media's production credits so far are Keanu Reeves' directorial debut, Man of Tai Chi, Police Story 2013 with Jackie Chan and The Monkey King: Uproar in Heaven 3D with Donnie Yen and Chow Yun-fat.

As a distributor, Wanda has Jim Sheridan's Dream House, the Taiwanese epic Seediq Bale and Eng Dayyan's Inseparable with Kevin Spacey and Daniel Wu.

A key factor behind the expansion of the Chinese film business has been the number of cinemas opening in the shopping malls springing up over China. Many of those malls are being built by Wanda.

Wanda group has assets of $48 billion and an annual income of $23 billion, and operates 71 Wanda plazas, 38 five-star hotels, 6,000 cinema screens, 57 department stores and 63 karaoke outlets across the country.

The company is Imax's largest international exhibition partner since a deal last month when its exhibition unit Wanda Cinema Line Corp. pacted with Imax for up to 120 new theaters for China.

Wanda and Imax revised their 2011 joint revenue share agreement to add at least 40 and as many as 120 new theaters to be located throughout China, and the deal also extended Wanda's lease terms for all new theaters to 12 years, from 10, and will see Wanda commit to up to 210 theaters.

"We have set a great goal for this company. In 2020, the revenue will reach 80 billion yuan, ranking within the global top 10 of cultural industry players," company chairman Wang Jianlin told a gathering of entrepreneurs in December.

All told, Wanda comprises 11 companies working in nine different areas, including Wanda Cinema Line, AMC Theaters, its theme park business, gallery and a film magazine.

The group's culture unit, the Beijing Wanda Culture Industry Group, has registered capital of five billion yuan ($820 million) and total assets of 31 billion yuan ($5.06 billion).

"The Chinese film market is very big these days, and all flowers should be blossoming in this garden," said The Palace's scriptwriter Yu Zheng, adding that he expects the movie to have broad appeal.

[GeneChing]

Odd time to drop this with The Grandmasters (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53227) having it's national release today. I'm reposting it here mostly because I reminds me of our Chollywood Rising column in our current print issue (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=1113). Our copy editor Gary Shockley (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56820) took over for this installment, and some of his comments are echoed in the article below.


Chinese Cinema: Have Pics, Can’t Travel (http://variety.com/2013/film/news/chinese-cinema-have-pics-cant-travel-1200593372/)
August 30, 2013 | 12:07PM PT
Filmmakers focus on local market but int’l expansion may come from corporate giants
Patrick Frater
Asia Bureau Chief

While the Chinese film industry is booming at home, with production volume, cinema numbers and theatrical box office all racing ahead, film exports are going almost nowhere.

Official figures are vague on the value of overseas sales achieved by Chinese rights holders, but data points to overseas box office for Chinese films dropping for the past two years.

In some quarters this is a cause for concern, but for others it is a matter of sublime indifference. That’s because they are too busy figuring out how to profit from this domestic golden era.

“China’s companies have no idea about international sales. That’s because they are so strongly focused on their home market,” says Albert Lee, CEO of Emperor Motion Pictures, another conglomerate that straddles Hong Kong and China.

When local films can gross anywhere between $30 million for “Say Yes” to the $200 million earned by “Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons” and “Lost in Thailand,” (pictured) China’s filmmakers will not go to the trouble of learning the complications of overseas territories for only marginal extra income.

While the new commercial movie crop is well-made and marks a refreshing break with the past, its stories are also more local. They may resonate with audiences in Asia, but for audiences in the U.S. and Europe, the new films, young directors and little-known TV and Internet stars may remain remote.

“For Chinese-language films, only kung fu movies work internationally,” says Bill Kong, head of Hong Kong- and China-based conglomerate Edko. In August he unveiled plans for “Rise of the Legend,” an attempted revival of Wong Fei-hung, one of the iconic characters of the Chinese action genre.

The irony here is that Kong was one of the producers of Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” a surprise global hit that was largely responsible for a massive surge of interest in Chinese movies in 2000. Unfortunately the boom, which had happened at the tail end of the video and DVD era, did not last. Also, the great financial crisis in the West meant many film funds never took off, output deals were allowed to expire, and U.S. and European buyers became more risk-averse — across the board, not just with Chinese movies.

The structure of China’s film industry has also hampered overseas success, especially its censorship system. Stories must not only steer clear of sex, drugs, religion and present-day politics, but also sci-fi, time travel, ghosts and contemporary thrillers. Censorship has also made international co-productions tricky, as regulations do not officially permit multiple versions of a Chinese film.

Filmmakers such as Chen Daming have complained that such rules make it difficult to have a strong antagonist, while John Woo’s producer partner Terence Chang says a contemporary crime thriller, such as the Chinese version of “The French Connection” he dreams of making, is out of the question because crime, corruption and police procedures are all taboo.

After liberalization in 2000-01, this meant a clustering of titles in “safe” genres: martial arts and ancient historical action.

Film regulators have gradually eased up and a genre normalization has taken place. The transformation has become more apparent with a succession of local hit movies this year, ranging from romantic comedies “Say Yes” and “Wedding Diary” through glossy actioner “Switch” to “American Dreams in China” and “So Young,” light contemporary dramas projecting a hip and aspirational universe contrasting with the naive simplicity of Chinese film just a decade or two ago.

In the longer term, the weight of history and economics may be on China’s side. China’s booming economy will draw in international talent, investors and co-producers such as Oriental DreamWorks, Legendary Pictures, Village Roadshow or Fox Intl. Productions. Chinese companies like China Film, Enlight, Le Vision, Bona Film or Huayi Bros. will seek the prestige and brand enhancement that comes from being a Hollywood player. Few believe that property-to-cinema group Wanda’s acquisition of U.S. cinema chain AMC is the last move in the Chinese film industry’s international expansion drive.

[GeneChing]

Maybe I should change the name of this thread to Wanda Rising. :rolleyes:

Wanda unveils Qingdao entertainment complex (http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/wanda-unveils-qingdao-entertainment-complex)
http://www.filmbiz.asia/media/BAhbB1sHOgZmSSIxMjAxMy8wOS8yMi8wMi80Ny81NS80NjEvdH Jhdm9sdGFfcWluZ2Rhby5qcGcGOgZFVFsIOgZwOgp0aHVtYkki DTUwMHgxMDAwBjsGVA?suffix=.jpg&sha=aad427dd
By Kevin Ma
Sun, 22 September 2013, 17:50 PM (HKT)

Dalian Wanda Group Co Ltd 大連萬達集團股份有限公司 unveiled plans for the Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis 青島東方影都, a RMB30 billion (US$4.9 billion) entertainment complex, at its opening ceremony in Qingdao today.

The 5.4 million square meter complex – targeted for a June 2016 launch – will include a production studio, film museums, a convention centre, a hotel resort and a yacht club.

Wanda Group chairman WANG Jianlin 王健林 announced that it has signed tentative agreements with several production companies and talent agencies. He estimates that 100 domestic and 30 international productions will be filmed at the complex each year.

Wang also announced that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the four top talent agencies in the world and the China Film Association 中國電影家協會 have offered their support in creating the Qingdao International Film Festival 青島國際電影節.

If approved by the central government, the first edition of the festival will be held in Sep 2016.

This morning's ceremony – including a 30-minute red carpet ceremony – featured appearances by representatives from SAPPRFT, Hollywood studios, American talent agencies and the AMPAS.

International stars like Leonardo DiCAPRIO, Nicole KIDMAN, John Travolta, Catherine Zeta Jones, Tony LEUNG Chiu-wai 梁朝偉, ZHANG Ziyi 章子怡, HUANG Xiaoming 黃曉明, Vicki ZHAO 趙薇 and Donnie YEN 甄子丹 also attended.

Local media reported that Wanda paid a rumoured RMB1 million (US$163,000) attendance fee for the appearance of certain local stars. It is not known if Hollywood stars were paid to attend.

[GeneChing]

I love that. I'm so going to use that. Cultural fish bone can refer not only to Chinese film. It plays a huge part in Chinese martial arts.


Chinese cinema on the world map (http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/chinese-cinema-on-the-world-map)
By Kevin Ma
Tue, 22 April 2014, 09:30 AM (HKT)
Sales Feature

http://www.filmbiz.asia/media/BAhbB1sHOgZmSSIrMjAxNC8wNC8yMS8wMy8yNC80NS80NTAvc2 luYV9mb3J1bS5qcGcGOgZFVFsIOgZwOgp0aHVtYkkiDTUwMHgx MDAwBjsGVA?suffix=.jpg&sha=d566a9c4

While co-productions have been on the tip of everyone's tongues at this year's Beijing Film Market 北京國際電影節電影市場, local industry insiders took part in a seminar organised by local media sina.com 北京新浪互聯信息服務有限公司 to explore why Chinese films have yet to make a dent on the world cinema map and whether there are new ways to bring Chinese cinema to the world.

Hollywood films have been a great financial success over the world. However, China, the world's second biggest territory for films, has yet to see its homegrown products receive the same treatment around the world. Revenue from foreign sales of Chinese films saw a decrease in 2013, while domestic hits like Lost in Thailand 人再囧途之泰囧 (2012) and Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons 西游　降魔篇 failed to make much box office abroad.

However, Bona Film Group Co Ltd 博納影業集團有限公司 Chairman YU Dong 于冬 remains optimistic about the situation, believing that Chinese cinema is in a decade of transition and that the industry needs to take three steps to reach the world: 1) Cultivate buyers' taste for Chinese films by selling them in bulk at a low price; 2) Send talents overseas by participating in international co-productions ("Even if they're just cameos"); and 3) Bring international production teams to work on Chinese films and tell Chinese stories.

The first two steps have already been taken — Yu said Iron Man 3 turned WANG Xueqi 王學圻 into one of the most widely seen faces in the world, despite being in just one scene — and the third step is already in progress with Jean-Jacques ANNAUD's Wolf Totem 狼圖騰.

Producer WANG Weimin 王為民 revealed that the 3-D drama has sold very well overseas, including an US$8 million minimum guarantee in Europe. Wang credits China Film Group Corporation 中國電影集團公司 for not only choosing to adapt a story that audiences are familiar with, but also boldly stepping out and invite an international team to tell a Chinese story.

However, Wang and other guests acknowledge the difficulties in getting international audiences to accept Chinese films.

Wang offered a very simple answer to the problem: "Film is a consumer product. As filmmakers, we have to make consumer products that audiences will accept. Why can't Chinese films go to the world? Chinese films-makers don't know enough about the world. Your products have to inspire audiences' desire to see it."

"The problem with Chinese stories is that Chinese society is a sentimental society, a society of acquaintances. We're always telling human stories, but our stories don't explore human nature," China Film Promotion International 中國電影海外推廣中心 general manage ZHOU Tiedong 周鐵東 said.

Zhou introduced the idea of "cultural fish bone", referring to the fact that foreigners have trouble eating Chinese fish dishes because the bones are not picked out. "We must take out the things that make our films difficult for audiences to swallow. This is how Hollywood films succeed. They tell global, universal stories. Their films basically have no 'cultural fish bones'. They connect to audiences of any culture, any age," Zhou said.

However, Wanda Media Co Ltd 萬達影視傳媒有限公司's Jerry YE 葉寧 expressed doubts about stripping cultural specificity for the sake of reaching a wide audience. "We can't just step out for the sake of stepping out. We have to do it while confident about our culture," Ye said.

Yu added that the biggest issue facing China now is deciding which genres have a better chance at selling abroad. He used to opportunity to reveal that Bona is planning to produce an international version of Alan MAK 麥兆輝 and Felix CHONG 莊文強's Overheard 竊聽風雲 (2009) series. Instead of selling remake rights, Bona wants to co-produce an English-language remake with a Hollywood company. The film, about shady dealings in the financial world, would be set on Wall Street and feature mostly American actors as well as several Chinese actors.

"In foreigners' eyes, we may have good stories, but they were not well told. Infernal Affairs 無間道 (2002) had a great story, so Hollywood bought it and made it universal," Zhou responded, "It's a good idea for Bona to lead the Overheard remake project, but the Chinese side cannot lead the story and the script. We may have a good story that Hollywood wants, but the story must become universal."

Ye concluded the forum by pointing out that in terms of export potential, Chinese animation is one of the healthiest genres in the industry because of the possibilities in branding, making it very different from other types of films. "Animated films don't necessarily have to make a profit at the box office as long as they can help build a brand," said Ye.

[GeneChing]

..but still relevant.


Asian conglomerates seek starring role in Hollywood studios (http://nypost.com/2014/12/02/asian-conglomerates-seek-starring-role-in-hollywood-studios/)
By Richard Morgan December 2, 2014 | 2:10am
Modal Trigger

http://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/film_netflix_s_gambit-e1417496466765.jpg?w=720&h=480&crop=1
Donnie Yen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend," slated for an August 2015 release. Asian companies are screen testing their interest in Hollywood studios.
Photo: AP

Hollywood is prepping for the next wave of Asian invasion by companies hungry to own a piece of a studio.
“The markets are beginning to ignore these reports because we’ve heard so many of them,” said Steven Azarbad, whose New York-based Maglan Capital owns a piece of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. “At this point we need to see a deal to believe it.”
Tony Wible, an analyst at Janney Capital Markets, has no doubt we will.
“A lot of places around the world have seen how well the US has done exporting media,” he said. “Now they want to do it.”
The desire is so great among Asian conglomerates, Wible added, there’s even a phrase for it — “ambition for soft power.”
This ambition is most pronounced in China, which last year surpassed Japan as the largest film market outside the US.
You can count China’s Dalian Wanda Group as the latest Asian company screen testing its interest in a studio.
Like Hangzhou-based Alibaba and Shanghai-based Fosun before it, Beijing-based Wanda has Lionsgate squarely in its sights.
Only it won’t settle unless it obtains a majority interest in the studio behind “The Hunger Games,” as well as such TV productions as “Mad Men” and “Orange is the New Black.”
“We want control,” Wanda Chairman Wang Jianlin said in a Bloomberg interview on Monday.
Wanda, which two years ago acquired AMC Entertainment in the US to become the world’s largest cinema owner, is already committed to investing $1.2 billion to build a Beverly Hills base.
Moreover, as part of its publicly declared ambition to control 20 percent of the global cinema market by 2020, it’s committed to building an $8.1 billion, 20-studio entertainment complex in eastern China.
Both of those projects, however, may be more feasible than wresting control of Lionsgate.
Mark Rachesky, Lionsgate’s chairman and largest shareholder, previously held discussions with Alibaba and Fosun to sell at least a part of his 37 percent stake.
But the lack of a deal — Alibaba’s interest remains alive, sources said, while Fosun invested $1 billion with former Warner Bros. head Jeff Robinov to form Studio 8 after ending its talks with Lionsgate — is making skeptics of some Hollywood investors.
That’s part of the reason Wanda insists its investment in any US studio gives it control. “They want to make sure whatever product it creates will also sell well in China,” Wible said.
Tokyo-based SoftBank doesn’t appear as control-oriented as its Chinese counterparts, having settled two months ago for a $250 million minority investment in Legendary Entertainment.
“They’re still learning the business,” said Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Harrigan, who noted SoftBank also demonstrated an ability to keep its ambitions in check by cutting off takeover talks with DreamWorks Animation SKG.

[GeneChing]

I don't really know Valiant but it looks like they just cashed in big time.


Chinese Film Company DMG Bets on Superheroes (http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-film-company-dmg-bets-on-superheroes-1425866991)
DMG Entertainment, Valiant Entertainment to develop films, toys and theme parks

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HH502_dmg030_J_20150308214948.jpg
This comic book cover released by Valiant Comics shows the cover of "Shadowman" No. 5. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
By LAURIE BURKITT
March 8, 2015 10:09 p.m. ET

BEIJING—Chinese film company DMG Entertainment is striking a deal with independent comic book publisher Valiant Entertainment in a move to develop films, toys and theme parks for China’s superhero-crazed consumers.

Beijing-based DMG is investing an undisclosed amount in Valiant to expand publishing, film, television and licensing of Valiant’s comic characters, it said in a statement on Monday. DMG said that it invested “eight figures” in U.S. dollars toward the expansion and another “nine figures” toward producing films and television programs based on Valiant characters, without releasing further details. A spokesman didn’t immediately provide further financial details.

The statement said the companies will focus on Chinese language content to build iconic characters in China and the Asia-Pacific.

DMG is betting on China’s strong appetite for action films and superheroes. In 2013, the Chinese company co-produced with Walt Disney Co. “Iron Man 3,” which pulled in $121 million from China’s box offices, more than a quarter of the movie’s $409 million global ticket revenue, according to film database Box Office Mojo. The top 10 grossing films in China last year included “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” at No. 6 with $116.5 million in ticket sales, and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” at No. 7 with $115.6 million.

Film studios in recent years have produced hits based on superheroes from major comic-book publishers. They include Batman and Superman, owned by Time Warner Inc.’s DC Entertainment, and Spider-Man and the Avengers, from Disney’s Marvel.

Valiant, an independent publisher, has a stable of characters that includes X-O Manowar, Shadowman and Harbinger.

DMG and Valiant, formed in 1989 and based in New York, want to build a franchise business that looks more like the one in the U.S., where film characters generate revenue far beyond the screen. The companies will create toys, games, live events and theme parks, the statement said.

Companies like Chinese entertainment giant Dalian Wanda Group Co. are attempting the same thing, creating films and characters and opening parks in China. Universal Parks & Resorts announced in October plans to open a $3.26 billion park in Beijing in the future.

“Audiences in China and the rest of the world are hungry for heroic stories they can more easily relate to,” said DMG President Wu Bing in the statement.

Write to Laurie Burkitt at laurie.burkitt@wsj.com

[GeneChing]

This speaks to the essence of this thread right now.


Wanda Cinema's earnings surge in 2014 (http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/wanda-cinemas-earnings-surge-in-2014)

http://www.filmbiz.asia/media/BAhbB1sHOgZmSSIsMjAxNS8wNC8xMi8xOC80NC8xNy8xMDQvd2 FuZGFfcGxhemEuanBnBjoGRVRbCDoGcDoKdGh1bWJJIg01MDB4 MTAwMAY7BlQ?suffix=.jpg&sha=a9040cdd

By Kevin Ma

Mon, 13 April 2015, 09:45 AM (HKT)
Exhibition News

Wanda Media Co Ltd 萬達影視傳媒有限公司's cinema chain reported a huge surge in earnings in 2014, according to an earnings report released on Friday.

In 2014, Wanda Cinema Line Corporation 萬達電影院線股份有限公司 earned RMB5.34 billion (US$860 million) in operating revenue, representing a year-on-year rise of 32.7%. Net profits was up by 32.9%, from RMB602 million (US$97.0 million) in 2013 to RMB801 million (US$129 million) in 2014.

With a market share of 14.2%, Wanda Cinemas is the biggest cinema chain in China. With 369 new screens in 40 new cinemas in 2014, Wanda now operates 1,616 screens in 182 cinemas across the nation.

Wanda is also the first cinema chain in China to be publicly listed. Guangzhou Jinyi Cinemas 廣州金逸電影 also applied to be listed earlier this year, but was disqualified. Shanghai Film Group Corp 上海電影集團公司 and China Film Group Corporation 中國電影集團公司 are also preparing IPOs.

[GeneChing]

...the coverage has shifted more to TV. But now, I think I'll stick with it. :cool:


China Has Hollywood’s Attention. It Wants More (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-04/china-has-hollywood-s-attention-it-wants-more)
Alibaba and other Chinese players see more than stars in Tinseltown
Anousha Sakoui
September 4, 2015 — 9:46 AM PDT

http://assets.bwbx.io/images/id.NUrHnhkEw/v1/750x-1.jpg
An impossible mission partially funded by Alibaba. Photographer: Bo Bridges/Paramount Pictures

Alibaba’s Jack Ma, China’s second-richest person, made headlines last year when he visited Hollywood looking for deals. He met with studio executives such as Sony Pictures’ Michael Lynton and sat courtside at a Los Angeles Lakers game with superagent Ari Emanuel and actor Jet Li. One memento of the trip surfaced this summer in the form of the Paramount Pictures hit Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation. Alibaba Pictures Group invested in the feature, which generated $479 million in global box office through Aug. 30, and got the rights to sell merchandise and tickets to its 367 million customers in China when the film opens there on Sept. 8.

The deal with Viacom’s Paramount is one of more than a half-dozen in the past year between U.S. studios and Chinese companies that are quickly putting down roots in Hollywood. Alibaba, Dalian Wanda Group, Huayi Brothers Media, and others want to funnel films through their media outlets at home, as well as deepen their understanding of the lucrative business. “China is trying to learn why Hollywood is so successful,” says Stanley Rosen, a University of Southern California political science professor who studies the relationship between the mainland and the U.S. film industry. China, he says, wants to master the business “from the bottom up.”

http://assets.bwbx.io/images/in2kkH3rsd4k/v1/-1x-1.jpg

Hollywood is happy to help. It needs the cash plus access to theaters in China, where the government limits the number of imported movies and controls how they are released. Such connections are crucial since China, projected to overtake the U.S. in box-office receipts by 2020, accounted for most of the growth in global movie ticket sales last year.

China’s would-be moguls hope to use stronger Hollywood ties as a way to make even more money off entertainment. When Mission: Impossible opens there, Alibaba will sell tickets online through its Taobao Movie unit, one of the country’s major ticketing platforms, which offers advance seat selection. People can pay using Alipay, Alibaba’s version of PayPal. The company also is planning to build China’s answer to Netflix and HBO, via a new service called Tmall Box Office.

Alibaba acquired a company called ChinaVision Media Group in 2014 to help it enter the business and renamed it Alibaba Pictures. The company sold HK$12.2 billion ($1.6 billion) in stock in June. Alibaba Pictures shouldered an undisclosed portion of the $150 million cost of making Mission: Impossible and said it’s looking for more ways to invest in Hollywood. (Paramount, which declined to comment for this story, said in June it hoped the deal was “the first of many collaborations” with Alibaba.)

State-backed China Movie Channel also invested in the spy flick, saying it would promote the film and sell tickets online. In a first for U.S. audiences, the names of both Chinese companies were displayed in the opening credits of the movie, following the century-old practice of studios like Paramount.

Last year, China’s theaters brought in $4.8b

People close to Alibaba say Ma’s strategy is to invest in specific films, rather than in studios. But real estate mogul Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man, is making bigger bets on infrastructure. Wang’s Dalian Wanda Group operates the world’s largest chain of movie theaters and is building the planet’s biggest studio theme park, Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis, on the coast of Shandong province. Wanda controls the No. 2 U.S. theater chain, AMC Entertainment Holdings, and last year bought land in Beverly Hills, where it plans to erect a $1.2 billion complex it calls its “first important step into Hollywood.”

Wanda, which footed the entire production cost of Southpaw, the summer release from Weinstein Co., also donated $20 million to a museum being built in Los Angeles by the motion picture academy that awards the Oscars; its film history gallery will be named after Wanda. Wang, who’s talked of buying stakes in studios Lionsgate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, wants to control 20 percent of the global film market by 2020.

Over the past year, U.S. studios “are going to these big companies with single pictures and saying, ‘Would you like to invest?’ ” says Robert Cain, a partner at Pacific Bridge Pictures, a film producer and consultant. “They’re investing because the opportunity is now being presented, and that’s only a recent phenomenon.”

Huayi Brothers Media, a Beijing-based moviemaker and distributor, raised about $560 million in August from investors including Ma’s venture capital outfit and Tencent Holdings, as well as Shanghai-based Fosun International, which has put $200 million into the Studio 8 production company on Sony’s Hollywood lot. Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital is among the backers of STX Entertainment, run by Robert Simonds, producer of films such as The Pink Panther and The Wedding Singer.

“China is trying to learn why Hollywood is so successful”—Stanley Rosen, University of Southern California

Even the Chinese government is getting in on the action. Besides Mission: Impossible, state-run China Movie Channel, the country’s No. 3 TV network, invested in Paramount’s Terminator: Genisys. China Film Group, the government-run distributor of all foreign movies, took about a 10 percent stake in Universal Pictures’ car-heist thriller Furious 7, which cost $190 million to make and grossed $1.5 billion globally—a quarter of that within China. There are risks, of course. China Film also invested in Sony’s Adam Sandler box office disappointment Pixels.

Cain says China’s government is able to use its control over its lucrative home market to influence U.S. studios and exert soft power—the kind of cultural influence that’s made Hollywood a global ambassador for America. China Film invested in The Great Wall, a thriller starring Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe about an elite force making a last stand for humanity on China’s snaking barrier. It’s targeted for a November 2016 release by Universal. Says Cain: “On a broad scale, China is steadily gaining more and more influence in Hollywood, and you won’t see a Chinese villain probably ever again in a Hollywood movie.”

—With Lulu Chen and Haixing Jin

The bottom line: More than a half-dozen Chinese companies have struck deals with Hollywood in the past year.

[GeneChing]

...from a different perspective. :)


Chinese pour big bucks into blockbusters (http://www.todayonline.com/chinaindia/china/chinese-pour-big-bucks-blockbusters)
Would-be movie moguls are investing in Hollywood in a bid to grow the industry at home

PUBLISHED: 4:16 AM, SEPTEMBER 7, 2015
LOS ANGELES — Alibaba’s Jack Ma, China’s second-richest person, made headlines last year when he visited Hollywood looking for deals. He met with studio executives such as Sony Pictures’ Michael Lynton and sat courtside at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game with super agent Ari Emanuel and actor Jet Li.

One memento of the trip surfaced this summer in the form of the Paramount Pictures hit Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation. Alibaba Pictures Group invested in the feature film, which generated US$479 million (S$682.10 million) in global box office through Aug 30, and got the rights to sell merchandise and tickets to its 367 million customers in China when the film opens there this week.

The deal with Viacom’s Paramount is one of more than half a dozen in the past year between American studios and Chinese companies that are quickly putting down roots in Hollywood. Alibaba, Dalian Wanda Group, Huayi Brothers Media, and others want to funnel films through their media outlets at home, as well as deepen their understanding of the lucrative business.

“China is trying to learn why Hollywood is so successful,” says Mr Stanley Rosen, a University of Southern California political science professor who studies the relationship between the mainland and the US film industry. China, he says, wants to master the business “from the bottom up.”

Hollywood is happy to help. It needs the cash and access to theatres in China, where the government limits the number of imported movies and controls how they are released. Such connections are crucial since China, projected to overtake the US in box-office receipts by 2020, accounted for most of the growth in global movie ticket sales last year.

China’s would-be moguls hope to use stronger Hollywood ties as a way to make even more money off entertainment. When Mission: Impossible opens there, Alibaba will sell tickets online through its Taobao Movie unit, one of the country’s major ticketing platforms. People can pay using Alipay, Alibaba’s version of PayPal. The company also plans to build China’s answer to Netflix and HBO, via a new service called Tmall Box Office.

Alibaba acquired a company called ChinaVision Media Group in 2014 to help it enter the business and renamed it Alibaba Pictures. The company sold US$1.6 billion in stock in June. Alibaba Pictures shouldered an undisclosed portion of the US$150 million cost of Mission: Impossible and said it’s seeking more ways to invest in Hollywood.

State-backed China Movie Channel also invested in the spy flick, saying it would promote the film and sell tickets online. In a first for US audiences, the names of both Chinese companies were displayed in the opening credits, following the century-old practice of studios such as Paramount.

In the past year, US studios “are going to these big companies with single pictures and saying, ‘Would you like to invest?’ ” says Mr Robert Cain, a film producer, consultant and Pacific Bridge Pictures partner. “They’re investing because the opportunity is now being presented, and that’s only a recent phenomenon.” BLOOMBERG

[GeneChing]

Most movie merch is 'Made in China (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?66168-Made-in-China)' anyway... :rolleyes:


Hollywood Execs Flock to Mtime's China Merchandising Expo (Exclusive)
(http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/disneys-andy-bird-pitches-star-848356)

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/675x380/2015/12/mcon11.jpeg
From left: Mtime CEO, Kelvin Hou: DreamWorks Animation CEO, Jeffrey Katzenberg; Raman Hui; Alessandro Carloni, director of "Kung Fu Panda 3"; Zeng Maojun, president of Wanda Theater Group
Mtime

by Patrick Brzeski 12/14/2015 1:35am PST

DreamWorks' Jeffery Katzenberg pitches 'Kung Fu Panda 3' and Disney's Andy Bird touts 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' to some 800 cinema-chain managers at an event devoted to China's surging movie merchandising sector.

The rapid emergence of movie merchandising in China — what many are calling the next great boom sector of the country's entertainment industry — was on full display in Sanya over the weekend, as DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffery Katzenberg and executives from Disney and Legendary Pictures flocked to the southern Chinese resort town to pitch their latest pictures and related consumer goods directly to Chinese movie theater owners.

The occasion was the second edition of MCon, an annual film-industry convention hosted by digital media group Mtime, the company behind one of China's leading movie websites and mobile ticketing platforms. Founded by former Microsoft executive Kelvin Hou, Mtime has been described as Fandango, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Entertainment Tonight all rolled into one.

As host of the two-day event, Mtime booked a sprawling Shangri-La luxury resort and flew in over 800 Chinese theater managers — collectively controlling a majority of the country's 31,000 movie screens — along with a roster of Hollywood power players, including Katzenberg, Walt Disney's international president Andy Bird, Legendary Pictures vp Jamie Kampel, and execs from Sony Pictures Entertainment, Mattel and the Motion Picture Association.

Over the past year, Mtime has made a bold bet that China's intellectual-property protection and consumer market have both reached the crucial stage where the country's moviegoing masses are ready to open their wallets for high-quality, licensed goods associated with their favorite film franchises.

In 2014, global retail sales of licensed merchandise hit $241.5 billion, with 44 percent of those sales coming from the character and entertainment category. But North America accounted for nearly 60 percent of the worldwide total, with Asia contributing under 10 percent — this, despite the tremendous gains of the Chinese box office, which is expected to surpass North America as the world's largest film market over the next three years.

"China has enjoyed explosive box office growth, but 80 to 90 percent of film revenue still comes from ticket sales," said William Feng, the Motion Picture Association's general manager in China, during opening remarks at MCom. "The industry is in its infancy, but I believe merchandise will be a key focus of China's movie market over the next several years."

Over the past 11 months, Mtime has launched 55 brick-and-mortar stores in cinemas in 10 cities, laying the groundwork for a cross-country online-to-offline merchandise service. On Thursday, the company released the final piece, Mtime PRO, a B-to-B mobile app that facilitates one-stop merchandising sales between Hollywood studios and Chinese movie theaters — made possible by an industrial chain of design, production, logistics and customer-service systems developed by Mtime over the past two and a half years. Mtime also has quietly signed a range of merchandise deals with all of the big six Hollywood studios. Mtime declined to share terms or details of its agreements, but it said some are ongoing and others are on a per-picture basis.

During MCon, the participating studios each gave an in-depth presentation on their latest tentpoles — including Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Kung Fu Panda 3 and World of Warcraft — along with an introduction to the myriad consumer products they have developed with Mtime for each title, which the cinema chain reps could then buy directly from the new Mtime PRO app.

Disney placed life-size stormtrooper figures throughout the venue, attracting constant crowds of selfie-snapping theater-chain staff. Katzenberg and Kung Fu Panda 3 director Alessandro Carloni made a surprise appearance at a banquet lunch to personally serve Chinese steamed buns, the preferred snack of Po, star of the Kung Fu Panda franchise.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/custom/Abid/Patrick/Mcon14.jpg
DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg serving dumplings to Chinese guests at Mcom.

Opening Jan. 29 in North America and China, Kung Fu Panda 3 will be the first release from Oriental DreamWorks, the joint venture established by DreamWorks Animation, Shanghai Media Group and China Media Capital.

Introducing the film to a room full of several hundred theater-chain heads during the DreamWorks session, Katzenberg stressed the authentically Chinese elements of both the story and production process (Disney's Star Wars talks were closed to the press).

"For me personally, it is exciting to see how this movie is a big part of the journey of DreamWorks itself," Katzenberg said, adding: "The first film was made in Los Angeles and dubbed from English into Chinese. We were thrilled that it was embraced by the Chinese people ... but the third film is a truly Chinese movie on every level."

Kung Fu Panda 3 will be released in both English and Mandarin-language versions. Katzenberg said a Chinese team was consulted at each stage of the pic's production, ensuring that the Mandarin-language script's humor and slang were precisely calibrated to local sensibilities.

"This is the most technologically advanced film in the history of our studio," he said. "Never before has a film been animated in two languages," he added, explaining that not just the character's mouths but also their body language and facial expressions were created separately for the English and Mandarin-language versions of the film.

Oriental DreamWorks vp Kitty Xu later took the stage, saying, "We are confident that Kung Fu Panda 3 will surpass Monster Hunt to become the highest-grossing Chinese film ever."

She then launched into a detailed overview of the exhaustive range of Chinese products that Oriental DreamWorks has developed for Kung Fu Panda 3's rollout, spanning toys, house wears, footwear, jewelry, apparel, electronics and much more.

As is customary at industry conventions nowadays, at least a third of the assembled guests were looking down and thumbing smartphones. This time, however, many may have been placing merchandise orders on Mtime PRO.

[GeneChing]

Wanda now owns Legendary and AMC. Fascinating.


Tue Jan 12, 2016 11:22am EST Related: ENTERTAINMENT, DEALS, CHINA
Wanda goes to Hollywood: China tycoon's firm buys film studio Legendary for $3.5 billion (http://www.reuters.com/article/2016/01/12/us-china-wanda-cinema-m-a-idUSKCN0UQ08F20160112?utm_source=applenews)
BEIJING | BY SHU ZHANG AND MATTHEW MILLER

Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group has bought U.S. film studio Legendary Entertainment for about $3.5 billion, turning its chairman into a Hollywood movie mogul as China's richest man steps up a drive to diversify his business empire overseas.

At a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday, Wanda Chairman Wang Jianlin said he plans to package Legendary, behind hits like "Jurassic World", with existing movie production assets in China and sell shares in the merged operation in an initial public offering (IPO).

The move makes Wanda the first Chinese firm to own a major Hollywood studio - a sign of the country's growing power in the global movie world, industry watchers said.

The executive gave no further details on the IPO plan, but said was acquiring Legendary Entertainment for both intellectual property reasons and the studio's movies. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this month a deal to secure a majority stake in Legendary had been agreed.

"Wanda Cinema already has made tremendous development in China, but it isn't enough," said Wang, whose personal wealth is estimated by Forbes magazine to be about $27 billion. "Movies are global, and our company certainly wants to add our voice to the world film market."

The deal is Wanda's biggest overseas acquisition ever and comes as Wang accelerates a drive to diversify a giant with 2015 revenue of $44 billion away from its core, but slowing domestic property operations. With deals to buy into everything from financial services to Spanish soccer club Atletico Madrid, Wanda said on Monday revenue rose 19 percent last year.

Under the deal announced on Tuesday, Wanda said it will buy an unspecified majority stake in Legendary. As part of the transaction, Legendary's founder and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Tull will continue to head up the movie maker.

Founded in Dalian, a city on China's northeast coast, and now based in Beijing, Wanda is already the world's biggest movie theater operator, having bought AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc, North America's second-largest cinema chain, for $2.6 billion in 2012. It also owns Australian movie theater company Hoyt's Group, and Wanda Cinema Line Corp, the group's domestically listed firm, is the biggest theater operator in China.

"The deal reflects the emergence of China as the next generation of Hollywood investors and represents a shift from Japan," said Dan Clivner, co-managing partner and media M&A attorney at Sidley Austin in Los Angeles.

Wang said that the Legendary's intellectual property - with prospects for movie tie-in promotions - would add value to its motion picture and television production business. That would lead to greater opportunities for joint production, he said, while bolstering its tourism and cultural businesses also.

China's booming movie industry, fueled by the country's growing urban middle class, saw box office revenue increase 49 percent last year and exceeded 40 billion yuan ($6.1 billion) for the first time, according to data from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.

In 2013, Wang, flanked by Hollywood A-listers like Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman, broke ground on a 50 billion yuan "motion-picture city" project in the eastern city of Qingdao, demonstrating his ambition to build China's own version of Hollywood.

Attending Tuesday's Beijing news conference, Legendary's Tull told reporters that he would continue to run daily operations, and that Wang had been "insistent we run operations and continue to run things the way we always have."

Founded in 2000, Legendary has made hits such as "The Dark Knight" and "Man of Steel", as well as "The Hangover" film franchise.

Legendary generally provides half the financing for movies whose budgets can run up to $200 million or more. It also has an agreement with China Film Co, the largest and most influential film company in China, to co-produce movies.

Both Wang and Tull dismissed concerns that Wanda's investment would lead to censorship or alter the content of its motion pictures.

"I'm a businessman," said Wang. "I buy things to make money, so I don't really think about government priorities. My main consideration is commercial interest."

Tull said that Legendary had already built up a brand in China with its blockbusters and wasn't looking to change its content.

"Frankly, we make movies that we want to see and thankfully they work here in China."

(Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20160112&t=2&i=1108814844&w=644&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=LYNXNPEC0B05W
Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, gestures as he speaks ahead of a signing ceremony with Spanish soccer champions Atletico Madrid in Beijing, January 21, 2015.
REUTERS/JASON LEE

[GeneChing]

Good for Dolby. For years, one of my biggest complaints about China was that they had terrible sound systems. That was more with festivals and concerts as I don't recall ever seeing a movie in a theater there - at least not a normal one. I saw some films at Shaolin, but that was quite different. There was a great 360 degree theater there once, and then there was the rollercoaster simulator, plus I saw a few movies shown to the wushuguan kids shown on hung blankets in the training fields at night.


Dolby Plans 100 Theaters In China, Courtesy Of Wanda Cinemas (http://deadline.com/2016/01/dolby-plans-100-theaters-in-china-courtesy-of-wanda-cinemas-1201691364/)
by Anita Busch
January 27, 2016 9:02am

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/wanda-cinema.jpg?w=446&h=299&crop=1
Ed Jones/AFP/GettyImages

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/dolby-cinema.jpg?w=239&h=239

The exhibition arm of Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group, the Wanda Cinema Line, has opened the door for San Francisco-based Dolby Laboratories to establish their system into 100 theaters over the next five years with the first location scheduled to open this spring. The theaters will be equipped with both what the company calls Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos which combines both image and sound technologies. By doing this, Wanda becomes the first cinema chain in China to do so. For Dolby, it continues their goal of global expansion.

RelatedChina's Largest Theater Group Enters Movie Merchandising Market
In just over a year, the company already has commitments to install their equipment in about 200 theaters overseas. Most recently, it opened two theaters with the digital equipment installed in The Netherlands and another in Spain. There are plans to open six locations via Cineplexx in Austria. In the states, AMC (owned by Wanda) said it will add 50 more Dolby Cinemas (as they are known) by year’s end with a total of 100 by 2024.

“We are thrilled to become the first cinema chain to bring the Dolby Cinema premium experience to moviegoers in China,” said John Zeng, President, Wanda Cinema Line in making the announcement. “I believe that Dolby Cinema, with its award-winning sound and imaging technologies and inspired design, will provide Wanda Cinema patrons a moviegoing experience that is unlike any other in China.”

“Dolby’s collaboration with Wanda Cinema Line marks a significant step in delivering the next-generation cinema experience on a global scale,” said Kevin Yeaman, President and CEO, Dolby Laboratories.

[GeneChing]

China's Wanda Deal for Legendary Gets U.S. Regulatory Approval (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wanda-legendary-deal-us-approval-861270)

http://cdn5.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/675x380/2012/06/wang_a.jpg
Wanda chairman Wang Jianlin

by Patrick Brzeski 2/2/2016 2:58am PST

Last month, the Chinese conglomorate announced plans to acquire the U.S. co-producer of 'Godzilla' and 'Jurassic World' for $3.5 billion, which would be the largest Chinese buyout of a U.S. media company ever.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has given Chinese real estate and investment conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group the green light to go forward with its $3.5 billion acquisition of Thomas Tull's Legendary Entertainment.

The Chinese buyout of the U.S. film studio was announced by the two partners in January.

“It is quite a feat for an acquisition to be approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce in such a short time,” Wanda said in a statement on Tuesday. “This reflects the positive attitude that the U.S. government has towards Sino-U.S. cultural exchange."

The Legendary deal is Wanda's latest step toward its goal of becoming a global, vertically integrated film company. The Chinese conglomerate has been pushing to diversify from its core real estate business since August 2012, when it spent $2.6 billion to acquire AMC Entertainment, North America's second-largest cinema chain. Last year, Wanda paid more than $600 million for Hoyts, Australia’s second-largest multiplex group. Wanda also owns China's largest domestic exhibition circuit, Wanda Cinema Line, which has a market cap of $18.5 billion.

According to Wanda, once the Legendary deal goes through, it will be the highest-revenue-generating film company in the world (the Chinese giant is also rumored to be shopping for a pan-European movie theater network).

The Wanda-Legendary deal faces one final regulatory hurdle: approval by China's National Development and Reform Commission and the country's Ministry of Commerce. The agreement isn't expected to encounter any difficulty in receiving swift passage on the Chinese side, however, given the way the Chinese government has been supporting leading local businesses' efforts to go global.

Wanda's founder and chairman, Wang Jianlin, is one of China's wealthiest individuals, with a net worth estimated at $32.7 billion by Forbes.

The big budget, spectacle-heavy pictures Legendary specializes in have had a strong track record in China. Many of the titles the studio has co-produced — such as Godzilla, Inception, Jurassic World and Pacific Rim — have done particularly big business in the CGI-loving Chinese market, which is expected to surpass North America as the world's most valuable theatrical territory sometime next year.

At least this justifies our Pacific Rim (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1100) coverage a little more. ;)

[GeneChing]

China Box Office: Revenue Soars 47 Percent in Normally Quiet January (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/china-box-office-revenue-soars-861589)

http://cdn5.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/675x380/2016/01/screen_shot_2016-01-05_at_4.07.56_pm.png
'Detective Chinatown'
YouTube screengrab

by Patrick Brzeski 2/3/2016 7:31pm PST

The market share for Hollywood movies, however, slipped to 29 percent for the first month of 2016.

While China's stock markets recently gave economists plenty of cause for concern, the country's movie box office showed no signs of slowing its historic expansion in the first month of 2016.

Box office revenue reached $583.4 million (3.839 billion yuan) in January, usually a relatively slow month for movie-going in the country. The haul represents a 47.2 percent increase over January 2015. The performance is roughly in line with the astonishing 48.7 percent full-year growth rate the Chinese theatrical market achieved in 2015 (the January growth figures were released by Beijing-based box office monitor, Ent Group).

The overall box office expansion means that Hollywood studios are making more money from China than ever, but their market share in the country has been on the wane — in 2015, Hollywood's share fell to 38.4 percent from 45.5 percent in 2014. China's regulators continue to employ selective scheduling to promote local fare. The Chinese film industry's output is becoming more diverse and professionally polished, too.

In January, that trend continued, with Hollywood titles representing approximately 29 percent, or $169.2 million, of the month's overall total (British movies took a little over 4 percent, thanks to Sherlock: The Abominable Bride's $24.4 million run).

The big Hollywood entry of the month was Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opened in China Jan. 9. Through Tuesday, Force Awakens had grossed $123 million, a little less than the $123.6 million earned to date by Detective Chinatown, a local action-comedy set in Thailand and produced by Wanda Media and Youku Tudou's Heyi Pictures. Force Awakens edged out Detective Chinatown as the highest-grossing movie of January, since the Chinese title opened on Dec. 31.

Other Western movies in the market for the first month of January were Vin Diesel's The Last Witch Hunter ($25.6 million), The Walk ($12.6 million), Solace ($5.3 million) and Alvin and the Chipmunks 4 ($5.7 million).

In February, Chinese films are expected to dominate more decisively, as local regulators institute a blackout period on foreign movie imports during the Chinese New Year holidays, spanning the first half of the month. Much anticipated Chinese titles — including Stephen Chow's Mermaid and From Vegas to Macau 2, starring Chow Yun-fat — are forecasted to make hay over the holidays.

Hollywood's big hope for February is Oriental DreamWork's Kung Fu Panda 3, which was allowed to open during the lucrative festive season thanks to its status as a co-production with China Film Group, and ODW's joint venture investment from China Media Capital and Shanghai Media Group. The threequel opened in China on Jan. 29, earning a strong $73.6 million through Tuesday after scoring the largest debut of all time in China for an animated film. Since it's an official Chinese co-production, regulators count KFP3's grosses on the Chinese side of the revenue share equation.

The growth of China's movie industry has been fueled by the steady emergence of a modern consumerist lifestyle across the country's 1.3 billion population, and the concomitant expansion of movie exhibition infrastructure. In 2014, 8,035 movie screens were installed in China — a construction rate of 22 screens per day.

At the end of 2015, China's screen count sat at 31,627, according to state sources. North America is estimated to have about 39,000 movie screens. If the current rate of growth holds up, China will surpass North America as the world's largest movie market in early 2017.

This is sooner than earlier predictions. If this happens, I'll have to expand my Chollywood column in Kung Fu Tai Chi (http://www.martialartsmart.com/19341.html)again.

[GeneChing]

The Chinese yuan may be worrying Wall Street, but Hollywood is betting on China.


Universal Finalizes $500M Slate Deal With China's Perfect World (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/universal-finalizes-500m-slate-deal-866613)
6:26 AM PST 2/17/2016 by Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2014/11/jeff_shell_h.jpg
Jeff Shell, chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group
Alex J. Berliner

The partnership that begins in 2016 will last five years or cover the co-financing of 50 films, making the Chinese video game and TV production company a major player in global entertainment.

Universal Pictures and Chinese multi-media company Perfect World Pictures have entered into multi-year financing agreement, which will cover films across the entire Universal slate.

The partnership will begin in 2016 and last five years or cover the co-financing of 50 films, making the Chinese video game and TV production company a major investor in one of Hollywood's hottest studios. Thanks to three hits (Jurassic World, Furious 7 and Minions) that made more than $1 billion at the box office, Universal had its most profitable year ever in 2015.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but sources close to the deal told The Hollywood Reporter in January that Perfect World would be making an investment of $500 million in Universal's slate, with the financing split evenly between debt and equity contributions. Perfect World is understood to be getting a 25 percent share of most, but not all, of the films released by Universal. Specific film titles included in the deal will be announced at a later date, the partners said in a statement Wednesday.

The agreement will not alter Legendary Entertainment's financing of select Universal titles, the two companies added. In another instance of China's growing market sway in Hollywood, Legendary was acquired by Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group for $3.5 billion in December.

“We are delighted to be partnering with Perfect World and appreciate the confidence it has in our film slates going forward after a record-breaking 2015,” said Jeff Shell, chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group. “With Perfect World’s history of success in the Chinese market, we look forward to exploring other opportunities to work together.”

Although it's still a relatively new name to Hollywood, Perfect World has been active in film distribution, as well as Chinese TV production. For example, it was the Chinese co-distributor on Lionsgate's Divergent, Insurgent and Ender’s Game, as well as Universal's Rush. It also served as a producer-distributor on romantic comedy Sophie’s Revenge (2009), with Zhang Ziyi and Fan Bingbing. Perfect World Pictures currently has a market capitalization of $1.9 billion (12.5 billion Chinese yuan).

Michael Chi, chairman of Perfect World, added: “Building out our film business and expanding into international markets are two of the most important initiatives for Perfect World. Universal has had a stellar last few years, and with a slate that boasts many titles that we know will thrive in the marketplace, we are confident our partnership with them is a solid step in the right direction. Our partnership with Universal is not just about making movies together, but also about the opportunities that exist in the synergy across our multiple business lines to maximize strategic value for all involved.”

Perfect World was represented by Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP. Universal Pictures was advised on the transaction by The Raine Group and represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

[GeneChing]

China’s Film Industry: A Blockbuster In The Making (http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/02/chinas-film-industry/?all=1)
By Knowledge@Wharton on February 17, 2016 9:28 pm in Business

While stories about China’s economy centers on a slowdown, China’s passion for movies, at home and abroad, follows a much more optimistic plotline. Its growth has been phenomenal, outperforming China’s traditional industries, such as manufacturing. Many experts believe China is on track to have the largest film audience in the world –- and by one estimate as early as 2020.

“The entertainment industry is a sunrise industry in China, while the steel industry is a sunset industry. The growth potential for the entertainment industry is still huge, despite a high growth rate of 17% [per year] in the past five years,” says Z. John Zhang, Wharton marketing professor. Already, the media and entertainment industry is worth $180 billion in China, he adds, and the number is only expected to get larger.

“Many sectors of the Chinese entertainment industry are growing well into double digits on an annualized basis, despite the slowdown in the overall economy. China’s steel industry by contrast is operating at only 70% utilization, with roughly 400 million tons of excess capacity. Neither domestic nor international demand will fill that gap,” says Gordon Orr, senior advisor to McKinsey and Co. who is projecting that China’s film audience size will exceed that of the U.S. in four years.

Currently, China’s movie ticket sales is second only to the U.S. In 2015, box office revenue hit a record $6.8 billion, up 49% from the previous year, according to China’s regulator, State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. That’s up from $1.51 billion a mere five years ago. North America also saw a record in 2015, hitting an estimated $11 billion for the first time even though it grew at a much slower rate of 7% year-over-year, reported media measurement and research firm Rentrak.

Moreover, China is expected to see a movie cross the $500 million threshold domestically in 2016, according to a McKinsey report. Some Chinese movies have already come close: Monster Hunt grossed $380 million to date while Lost in Hong Kong garnered more than $250 million. The record for an American film, Avatar, was $760 million on U.S. screens.

It wasn’t always this way. From 1979 to the early 1990s, Chinese movies were mainly propaganda films approved by the Communist government, according to an October 2015 report by the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission. As a result, the film market dwindled, with attendance falling by 79% from 1982 to 1991. To revive its movie business, China brought in its first foreign film in 1994 — Warner Bros.’ The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. The Chinese began importing more American films and today allows an annual quota of 34 a year.

Catalysts for Box Office Growth

At four times the size of the U.S., China’s population makes it the golden goose of the film industry. “China’s audience will one day be bigger than the U.S.,” predicts Qiaowei Shen, Wharton marketing professor. Moreover, the average Chinese citizen goes to the movies less than once a year while the average American goes almost four times a year. “There’s huge potential [for growth] if the average Chinese person [just] goes to the movies two times a year, then box office receipts will increase by two times,” she notes.

“Many sectors of the Chinese entertainment industry are growing well into double digits on an annualized basis, despite the slowdown in the overall economy. –Gordon Orr

Movies also are underpenetrated in China. Extending movie runs to second-, third- and fourth-tier cities should further propel box office receipts. “Big cities are very mature already, says Shen. “Now those smaller cities are becoming very important. [Studios are increasingly] marketing in those small cities. A few years ago, they would concentrate in Shanghai and Beijing,” Shen adds. Now they bring the movie stars to do promotional appearances in more than 20 cities, not just in major urban centers.

The infrastructure for movie-going is also on the rise. Adding movie screens and building cinemas, especially in the smaller cities, will spur growth of the entertainment industry in China, adds Shen. When a new shopping mall is built in China, it’s usually anchored by a theater.

China is building at a rapid rate of 15 new movie screens daily in new and existing cinemas, up from more than three screens a day in 2012, according to the U.S. commission’s report. China currently has 31,627 screens while North America has approximately 39,000 screens, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Orr predicts that the addition of screens will lead to growth of more than 20% in China’s box office in 2016. Bloomberg reports that China is expected to have 53,000 screens by 2017.

Rising disposable incomes among the growing ranks of the Chinese middle class also boosts the entertainment industry. According to EY, the disposable income per person jumped nearly five-fold to $3,440 from 2000 to 2011. Orr further adds, “The close to 50% year-on-year growth in the Chinese movie box office in 2015, continuing in 2016, indicates how, if you provide a higher quality service, the Chinese middle class will buy more of the service.”

As such, Hollywood studios with an eye to global box office gold know they cannot ignore the Chinese market — and have devised ways to get around the annual quotas set by the government. “There is not a big movie studio in the world that is not thinking about how to crack the China market from the start of making its movies,” says Zhang.

China Eyes Hollywood

China is also eyeing Hollywood to bolster its entertainment holdings and forge creative collaborations. “Many Chinese entertainment companies have a lot of capital; they may feel short of opportunities to deploy this capital in China and see easier opportunities to do so internationally,” notes Orr.

But China looks beyond financial reasons in inking deals. “There’s a concerted effort in China to move into the global entertainment and media industry to build China’s soft power,” adds Zhang. The cultural sector is one of the pillars of China’s Five-Year Plan, meaning the government makes an effort to support Chinese investment in entertainment. “Aside from being good business, it is a way to protect China’s influence in the world.”

“There’s a concerted effort in China to move into the global entertainment and media industry to build China’s soft power.” –Z. John Zhang

Recently, the Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate led by China’s richest man Wang Jianlan, paid $3.5 billion for Legendary Entertainment, a major Hollywood studio responsible for the Batman and Jurassic World franchises. It is the first Chinese company to buy a big U.S. studio; it is also Wanda’s largest foreign acquisition. According to Variety, Wang hasn’t ruled out more forays into entertainment, saying “we want to have a bigger position in the global movie industry.”

Wanda, the largest commercial real-estate developer in China, has become the largest movie theater operator in the world after acquiring AMC Entertainment Holdings in 2012 for $2.6 billion. Orr adds, “Chinese business leaders recognize that many elements of the entertainment business are fully global and if they are to maximize their revenues they need to be able to seamlessly access global markets. Making international acquisitions can accelerate their ability to do so.”

Wang is also developing one of the world’s largest movie-production facilities in Qingdao, China, which includes 30 soundstages, a permanent set featuring a New York City street, as well as a theme park and resort hotel to accommodate families and staff of cast and crew. The public announcement of the studio included appearances from actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman as well as movie studio executive Harvey Weinstein.

Zhang believes more deals will come. Orr concurs: “Early Chinese moves into investing in foreign entertainment are seen to be successful in China, encouraging more to follow.”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

I copied all the posts above from our Chollywood-rising (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?57225-Chollywood-rising) thread. That'll make them redundant but there were 35 and I didn't feel like going through and sorting them out. From now on, I'll post Wanda news here.


Chinese owner of AMC seeks $1.5 billion for stock sale (http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article62233407.html)

http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/ixvmv6/picture62233402/ALTERNATES/FREE_960/amc
Dalian Wanda Group plans an IPO for Wanda Pictures

Dalian Wanda Group, the Chinese conglomerate planning an IPO for its film unit, is seeking to raise $1.5 billion from domestic Chinese investors for Wanda Pictures, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Wanda Pictures, which makes Chinese language films such as “Mojin: The Lost Legend,“ agreed in January to acquire Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion. Its chairman, Wang Jianlin, said in January that Wanda planned to package Legendary with some of its filmmaking and distribution assets for an initial public offering.

Wanda Group also controls Leawood-based AMC Entertainment Holdings, the second-largest movie theater chain.

Bloomberg News

[GeneChing]

Wanda for worldwide cinematic domination...


China’s Wanda in Bid Talk for Turkey’s Mars (http://variety.com/2016/biz/asia/wanda-bid-talk-turkey-mars-1201715892/)
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/wanda-group-logo.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1
COURTESY OF DALIAN WANDA
FEBRUARY 26, 2016 | 04:18AM PT

China’s Wanda Group – widely expected to unveil a major investment in a Parisian property and entertainment complex and believed to be a possible suitor for Paramount – may also be preparing another acquisition.

The company’s name has been linked to a possible purchase of Mars Entertainment, Turkey’s largest cinema chain. So too is South Korea’s CJ-CGV.

“Mars is exploring strategic options through investment banks who are in touch with several international exhibition companies, including Wanda,” a source close to Mars told Variety. “Timing of the deal is this year, but we do not know the price.”

Bloomberg reports that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were appointed in December by Mars’ owners and that a formal sale process could kick off in March. It also suggested that private equity firms would also be interested.

Adding fuel to the speculation that deals-hungry Wanda could cut short the bidding process and quickly snatch up the Turkish chain, was the suspension of trading on Wednesday in the shares of Wanda Cinema Line.

The company asked for a trading halt “pending an acquisition announcement,” according to a regulatory filing.

Wanda’s Mars move would make sense. In just over a decade Mars Entertainment Group has become the top exhibitor in Turkey which is Europe’s most rapidly growing moviegoing market.

Founded in 2001 by Muzaffer Yildirim, a former exec in the country’s booming tourism industry, Mars has built more than 500 state-of-the-art screens in 24 Turkish cities and plans to have more than 1,000 screens by 2017, all operated under the Cinemaximum brand. They currently account for more than half of Turkey’s total box office.

Wanda Cinema Line now has a market capitalization of $14.4 billion (RMB94 billion). That makes it vastly more valuable than the North American giant AMC that Wanda acquired for $2.3 billion in 2012, or Hoyts, the number two Australian circuit it bought last year. Yet Wanda Cinema Line has still not used its highly valued shares for a major foreign expansion.

CGV, which now has operations in five countries, denied that it was actively pursuing Mars.

“The rumor (that CGV will buy Mars) has been around for a while. Mars is one of those companies on our list and nothing specific is happening between Mars and CGV. Wanda is a big group and they’re aggressively signing MOUs with foreign cinema chains these days, I assume that’s why the rumors say it’s either CGV or Wanda (that is looking to buy a cinema chain) most of the time,” spokesman and CJ-CGV spokesman Cho Sung-jin told Variety.

Neither Wanda or Mars have offered any comment.

Earlier this year, when announcing the $3.5 billion acquisition of Legendary Entertainment, Wanda group chairman Wang Jianlin said that his empire is planning five major acquisitions this year.

Nick Vivarelli contributed to this report.

[GeneChing]

It's not just movie theater chains that Wanda is after...


Report: China’s richest man interested in buying ASO (http://velonews.competitor.com/2016/02/news/report-chinas-richest-man-interested-in-buying-aso_396616)
By Gregor Brown
Published 3 hours ago

http://cdn.velonews.competitor.com/files/2016/02/2015-Tour-de-France-660x440.jpg
2015 Tour de France
The Tour de France peloton charged down the Champs-Élysées in Paris last summer. Photo: Tim De Waele | TDWsport.com

MILAN (VN) — China’s richest man Wang Jianlin could buy ASO and its Tour de France. A report in the Wall Street Journal claims his Dalian Wanda Group will invest in Europa City near Paris and possibly make a push for cycling’s top organizer.

The Wanda group already tried to take over RCS Sport and its races, which includes the Giro d’Italia, in December. Money was not an issue for the $39 billion group, just that RCS Mediagroup decided to keep its sports subsidiary. Wang’s sights are now on France.

The Journal reported how the Dalian Wanda Group is pushing into L’hexagone for the first time with Europa City, a multi-use development project in the northern suburbs of Paris. The Chinese group would likely invest in the project’s amusement park. The opening date is set for 2024, but other French acquisitions could take place beforehand.

“Wanda is also interested in potentially buying Amaury Sport Organisation, people familiar with Wanda’s plans said,” reports the Journal. “They cautioned that the Tour de France deal isn’t as advanced and discussions remained at early stages.”

ASO owns 19 events and organizes three others, with seven of those in the UCI WorldTour. More than 180 countries receive the Tour de France broadcast.

The Wanda Group recently bought Infront Sports & Media and for $650 million, the World Triathlon Corporation along with Ironman. The German one-day Vattenfall Cyclassics race, which American Tyler Farrar won twice, now falls under that umbrella.

Infront made headlines this week when it reached a 10-year deal with cycling group Velon. ASO has been at odds with Velon, but if the Wanda deal happens, that would quickly change.

ASO is looking to change its ways. In December, it said it would pull all of its races from the WorldTour for 2017 because it disagreed with the UCI’s reforms. VeloNews asked Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme if there was room to negotiate and he said the UCI must first get a handle on motorized cheating. “If that problem is not sorted out, then what is the point of talking about anything else?” he said.

The Journal report suggests that further up the ladder something may be changing. The Amaury family may not want to let ASO go, but one cannot deny that Wang is serious. Last April, his group bought a 20 percent stake in Atletico Madrid for $52 million. He splashed into Hollywood by buying Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion in January.

China knows Wang Jianlin as a real estate and cinema king and as the main sponsor of its Super Soccer League.

“Wang wants these businesses to promote his real estate and tourism businesses,” Chen Xujie, a Chinese journalist for Biketo, told VeloNews in December. “He bought Ironman, with it he gets people to the races and to his hotels, and maybe to buy a home. China has a huge growing middle class, with money for triathlons and tourism.”

Lance Armstrong discussed with investors in 2009 about buying the Tour de France. Nothing came of it and an anti-doping investigation eventually proved Armstrong to be a cheat.

[GeneChing]

Disneyland Paris to Get Challenger Backed By Billionaire Chinese Businessman (https://skift.com/2016/02/28/disneyland-paris-to-get-challenger-backed-by-billionaire-chinese-businessman/)
Bloomberg - Feb 28, 2016 1:00 pm

https://skift.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/image-1-1280x853.jpeg
Image of EuropaCity from a promotional video. EuropaCity



We hope they’re thinking very long term, because right now there is no market to support another park in the region.
— Jason Clampet

A partnership led by by Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group Co. plans to invest more than $3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) in a retail and leisure development project outside of Paris, taking on Walt Disney Co. in the euro area’s second-largest economy.

EuropaCity will be built 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) northeast of Paris. It will be the biggest single investment project in Europe to date, including a theme park, show stage, hotel, retail stores and conference centers, the company said in a statement. The project, which spans more than 80 hectares (198 acres), will also provide about 20,000 jobs during construction and 14,000 after it opens, according to the statement.

For Wanda, which runs theme parks across China, movie theater chains in the U.S. and a soccer club in Spain, the move represents a renewed overseas push, underscoring Wang’s increasingly global ambitions. The conglomerate agreed in January to buy “Godzilla” producer Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion, paving the way for the tycoon to become the first Chinese person to control a Hollywood film company.

France-based shopping center developer Immochan is overseeing the project. Immochan is an arm of Groupe Auchan, a family-owned supermarket operator.

Wang is also interested in potentially buying Amaury Sport Organisation, a company that runs cycling’s Tour de France race, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Wang, who vies with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. founder Jack Ma for the title of China’s richest person, has set his sights on beating Disney in the theme park business.

Disneyland Revenue

In January, he told executives that visitor arrivals and revenue at Wanda’s tourism projects in Wuxi and Guangzhou will beat those of Disneyland in Shanghai and Hong Kong, respectively, according to a transcript of the speech posted on the company’s website.

Europacity may add to challenges facing Disneyland Paris, which needed a bailout in 2014 to upgrade its facilities and reverse a slump in attendance.

Already this year, Wanda announced a $2.3 billion investment in three hospitals, the formation of a financial group and the signing a $10 billion development deal in India, in addition to the Legendary acquisition. Wanda has said it’s planning five major acquisitions in 2016 — three of them overseas.

Wang’s investments in Europe include the Club Atletico de Madrid soccer team and Swiss marketing firm Infront Sports & Media AG.

Wanda is seeking acquisitions to bolster growth as the group braces for falling sales from its main property business. That’s prompted Wang, estimated by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index to have a fortune exceeding $26 billion, to increasingly look toward expanding his entertainment business.

Wang’s film, tourism and sports operations all fall under Wanda’s fast-growing Cultural Industry Group, which saw revenue climb 46 percent last year and is forecast to climb 30 percent in 2016. By comparison, Wanda Group estimates overall sales rose 19 percent in 2015 and will probably decline 12 percent this year because of the slump in its property business.

–With assistance from Helene Fouquet, Mark Deen, Rachel Butt and Lulu Yilun Chen.

The Wanda Empire is mind boggling.

[GeneChing]

I'm not familiar with Carmike Cinemas. That franchise is not in my area. Anyone know more about them?


Wanda’s AMC theater chain to buy Carmike for $1.1 billion (http://wtop.com/movies/2016/03/wandas-amc-theater-chain-to-buy-carmike-for-1-1-billion/)
By RYAN NAKASHIMA
March 3, 2016 8:33 pm

http://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Wanda-AMC-Carmike-1880x1254.jpeg
FILE - In this Dec. 17, 2014 file photo, a patron walks into a Carmike Cinemas movie theater, in Atlanta. AMC Entertainment, the movie theater chain bought by Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group in 2012, is acquiring rival chain Carmike Cinemas for $1.1 billion including debt...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — AMC Entertainment is acquiring rival Carmike Cinemas to create the world’s largest movie theater chain.

AMC, which Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group bought in 2012, said Thursday it is paying $1.1 billion including debt for Carmike.

The combined company will be the dominant theater chain in North American and signals Wanda’s further expansion into the entertainment industry. Just two months ago, it said it would spend $3.5 billion to acquire mid-level studio Legendary Entertainment, the co-financier of blockbusters like “Jurassic World” and “The Dark Knight.”

Wanda is also behind a multibillion-dollar studio complex being built in eastern China that was used to shoot the upcoming movie, “The Great Wall.”

AMC will pay $30 in cash per share, about 19 percent higher than the $25.11 Carmike shares closed at Thursday.

The acquisition will boost AMC’s theater locations by more than 70 percent to well over 600 and increase its screen count by half to nearly 8,400. Regal Entertainment Group, the current leader, runs nearly 7,400 screens in about 570 theaters.

The boards of both companies approved the deal, which is expected to close by the end of the year following a review by government competition authorities.

AMC CEO Adam Aron said he hopes the combination will boost profits in 2017 and enable about $35 million in annual savings, while bringing upscale amenities like alcohol service, reclining chairs, and expanded food offerings to more venues.

He said the cost of upgrading would be “reasonable” and profitable. He also said Wanda, which owns 75 percent of AMC, was supportive of the deal, but he declined to speak on behalf of Wanda.

“Clearly, they are supportive of what AMC is doing, and what AMC is doing is we’re growing our business,” Aron said.

Aron said any possible theater closures would “depend on a conversation with the Justice Department.”

He noted there are only a few markets where the companies’ theaters overlap and where closures might occur. AMC is focused on larger cities while Carmike is in smaller markets.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. is based in Leawood, Kansas, which will be the combined company’s new headquarters. Carmike Cinemas Inc. is headquartered in Columbus, Georgia.

[GeneChing]

The Chicoms own the most U.S. cinemas. How might this play out in the long run?


AMC + CARMIKE
The Chinese Communist Party’s richest man is now the biggest owner of US movie theaters (http://qz.com/631320/chinas-richest-man-is-now-the-biggest-owner-of-us-movie-theaters/)

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/wangjianlin.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1600
Wang Jianlin, movie-theater magnate. (Imaginechina via AP Images)

WRITTEN BY Heather Timmons
OBSESSION
Glass March 04, 2016

AMC Entertainment, the movie-theater chain owned by Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda, has purchased Carmike Cinemas, a rival 3,000-screen chain known as “America’s hometown theater circuit,” for $1.1 billion. The deal puts AMC into the top spot in the US movie-theater industry, with 8,380 screens in over 600 theaters across the country.
It also puts even more of the US entertainment industry into Chinese control, as deep-pocketed Chinese tycoons seek partnerships with Hollywood studios, gaming companies, and digital-effects studios. Wang Jianlin, who owns Dalian Wanda, has been one of the most aggressive—the group purchased Jurassic World producer Legendary Entertainment in January for $3.5 billion.
After the Carmike deal closes, the US movie-theater landscape will be dominated by AMC, followed by Regal Entertainment and Cinemark Theaters, before fragmenting into dozens of smaller chains, many of them family-owned:

https://atlas.qz.com/i/atlas_N1Tu4Izne.png

Wang, who is China’s richest man, is a former commander in the People’s Liberation Army, and a current delegate to the Chinese People’s National Congress, as well as a member of an advisory board to the Communist Party. Some of his current and former businesses are closely linked to the family of current president Xi Jinping, the New York Times noted last year.
Wang’s investments are influenced by political directives. He bought into professional soccer teams abroad because “government leaders care about it very much,” he wrote in an autobiography.
Will dominance of the theater market by a Communist Party heavyweight influence what appears on American screens? Under Xi, China has undergone a widespread crackdown on free speech and tighter controls on the media. New rules prohibit television shows from depicting ****sexuality and “sexual freedom,” for example, and news media have been instructed to reflect the party’s point of view at all times.
“There are multiple ways in which China gets its message out,” Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at the University of Canterbury who studies the Communist Party, told Quartz before the AMC deal. Beijing’s handling of criticism about its slowing economy may seem heavy-handed, Brady said, but China’s “economic propaganda” has been incredibly successful—giving Beijing broader influence in Hollywood and elsewhere.
Getting Hollywood movies to show positive portrayals of China, or no portrayal of it all, is part of the government’s goal of spreading a positive image of the country, she said.

[GeneChing]

Can Legendary Entertainment Bypass China's Film Quota System?
3:00 AM PDT 4/8/2016 by Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2016/03/gettyimages-470522018.jpg
Wanda's billionaire chairman, Wang Jialin
Getty Images

In the wake of Dalian Wanda Group's $3.5 billion acquistion of Thomas Tull's studio, the high-stakes political maneuvering in Bejing is gathering steam.

When Chinese real estate and investment conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group acquired Thomas Tull's Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion in January, many t***** questions came to the fore.

For the first time ever, a Chinese company — one headed by China's richest man, Wang Jianlin, no less — had come to own a U.S. film company that has backed several international blockbusters, with a track record that included hits like Godzilla, Pacific Rim and Jurassic World.

Sizing up ensued: Was Wanda the latest dumb money to airdrop cash into tinsel town, or was it up to something far more sophisticated? (the later, it turns out: Wanda managed to offset most of the cost of Legendary in a matter of weeks, flipping the studio to Chinese investors in a share offering that raised $2.4 billion).

Meanwhile, Wanda continued expanding its already sprawling global movie theater network, merging U.S.-based Carmike Cinemas with AMC Entertainment in a $1.1 billion all-cash deal (which still needs FTC approval) that will create the largest cinema chain on the planet, spanning North America, China and Oceania. No company has ever held so many screens in so many places. Again, what was Wanda's strategy? (theories here)

Above all, many wondered whether these watershed moments signaled that 2016 would finally be the year when the deals between Hollywood and China begin to flow in earnest, after so many false starts in the past. (Thus far, that has indeed been the case: Weeks later, China's Perfect World Pictures invested $250 million into Universal's film slate, Hangzhou-based Film Carnival poured $500 million into former Disney chairman **** Cook's startup studio; and Joe and Anthony Russo, the director duo behind Marvel's Captain America franchise, launched boutique studio Anthem & Song with an estimated $200 million to $300 million in Chinese financing)

Still, despite all of the speculation and cross-border hubbub, sources in Beijing tell THR that one crucial question has yet to be accounted for: Now that Legendary is nominally a Chinese company, how will the Chinese government treat the studio's movies? Is Legendary now American or Chinese?

"Wanda is going to try to make a strong case that Legendary's movies should be classified as Chinese from now on," one senior Chinese film executive told THR in Beijing, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of discussing policy matters.

If China's film regulators are unwilling to go so far, Wanda probably will try to negotiate other concessions on behalf of Legendary, the exec suggested.

"That's how I would play it — open strong, then work towards the middle, maybe better treatment for some movies but not all," he added.

Both Wanda and Legendary declined to comment.

While wonky on the surface, the question of classification could have game-changing implications for both Hollywood and the Chinese industry, insiders say.

The Chinese box office grew 50 percent in the first quarter of 2016, and it is expected to surpass North America as the world's largest film market sometime next year.

In an effort to nurture its domestic industry while dampening Western cultural influence, China limits Hollywood's market access with a notoriously strict quota system, which allows just 34 foreign films into Chinese theaters on revenue-sharing terms each year. The authorities also institute blackouts on foreign imports during the most lucrative moviegoing weeks of the year, over the summer, fall and winter holidays, giving local pictures an uncontested run at cinemas. Local movies also take close to 50 percent of box office, whereas Hollywood's share is limited to 25 percent under the quota system.

"Wanda, like any studio in a similar position would, will of course attempt to get this better treatment [for Legendary]," says Peter Schloss, CEO of CastleHill Partners, a Beijing-based specialist merchant bank focusing on media, sports and entertainment.

"It will be especially fascinating to see what the Chinese government response would be," adds Lindsay Conner, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP Entertainment, who represented Beijing-based Perfect World Pictures in its $250 million slate deal with Universal. "This is the first time a significant Western film production company has had Chinese ownership and that has the potential to be a game changer," he says.

The situation presents China with an unprecedented dilemma, pitching two of its key policy goals in conflict.

On the one hand, granting Chinese status to Legendary's movies would provide a strong incentive within the local industry for the Chinese takeover of film companies abroad. But it would also create a de facto expansion of the quota on Western movies allowed into the country, given that most of the movies Legendary has in the pipeline — with one notable exception (more on this below) — are Hollywood through and through.

"How the government responds will provide some indication of what it regards as the greater priority," Conner explains. "Is it more important to build China as a force in the global film industry, or is it more important to limit and regulate the number of Western films that are allowed into the country each year?"

"It's the classic double-edged sword, but in this case it's wielded by a powerful Chinese media company," he adds.
continued next post

[GeneChing]

Increasing Chinese soft power abroad is one of Beijing's highest-level policy priorities, and the failure of Chinese films internationally has been a disappointment to both the leadership and the local industry. Since its release in February, Stephen Chow's fantasy blockbuster The Mermaid has grossed a record-smashing $525.8 million in China, while earning just $3.2 million in North America. Other Chinese hits have fared considerably worse overseas. Last month, Chinese officials announced a scheme to offer any local film that can make more than $150,000 (1 million yuan) abroad a cash rebate of 1 percent of total foreign box office.

Legendary's upcoming films, even if they flop spectacularly by Hollywood standards, are all but certain to make vastly more money in the international marketplace than Chinese films have in recent years. But classifying Legendary movies as Chinese only adds yet another layer of complication to the macro policy picture.

"On paper, this may allow them to say that 'Chinese' films are doing well overseas, but it's not clear how a movie like Jurassic World or Godzilla actually helps Chinese soft power," says Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California who studies China’s film industry. "It will seem like they are making a concession to Western culture, when their goals are to do just the opposite."

"The temptation would be to put more Chinese elements into the films, and get them approved as co-productions," Rosen explains.

"The danger there," he adds, "is whether they will still be successful globally — how much Chinese content can you put in there and still get the international market?"

Long before Wanda came calling, Legendary was already exploring the China co-production angles under its Asia-focused Legendary East shingle, set up in 2011 and headed by Peter Loehr, former managing director of CAA China.

The studio's long gestating debut China co-prod, The Great Wall, is finally due for worldwide release on February 17, 2017 (it was originally slated for release on Nov. 23). Financed and produced by Legendary, Beijing-based LeVision Pictures and the state-backed film colossus, China Film Group, the big-budget fantasy action feature is directed by Zhang Yimou and stars Matt Damon, Willem Dafoe, Hong Kong's Andy Lau, Jing Tian, Luhan, Pedro Pascal and others. Set in the Northern Song Dynasty, the story explores a set of mysteries surrounding the Great Wall of China.

"The Great Wall will be a very important test case," Rosen says, "because it does have a lot of Chinese content — it features the Great Wall, a cherished symbol of China around the world — and it also has Hollywood actors, English dialog and the potential to be an international hit."

Come 2017, you can bet that both the international film community and the Chinese government will be carefully weighing the film's credibility and performance — albeit according to very different metrics.

In recent years, Chinese regulators have been strict about ensuring that co-productions meet the full criteria of the official classification, which requires substantial Chinese content and story elements, along with a cast and crew that is at least 30 percent Chinese — including in lead roles. With the official co-production stamp of approval come all of the benefits extended to local Chinese films, including a 43 percent share of Chinese box office instead of the usual 25 percent Hollywood takes.

Most of the industry sources THR consulted, both in China and Hollywood, said they think it is unlikely that Wanda will succeed in getting regulators to treat Legendary films as fully "Chinese" for import purposes.

With the opening gambit closed, Wanda is expected to pursue middle ground concessions, as the Beijing executive suggested.

"China may be willing to bend the rules on co-production status, if [Wanda and Legendary] move partway towards some of the guidelines," agrees Rosen.

And even if Legendary deems that adding too much China content to its tentpoles will hurt them globally — at least for now — there are plenty of additional ways in which Wanda will wield its heft and local savvy to the benefit of Legendary in the booming Chinese home market. For one, the conglomerate owns China's largest movie theater network, guaranteeing a big splash on a huge number of screens for any Legendary release. Wanda also owns one of China's largest distributors, Wuzhou Film Distribution, which will presumably work its relationships with China Film Group to secure desirable release dates and plenty of lead time for marketing Legendary's movies online and on the ground in China — something the Hollywood studios have long craved.

"There’s also the issue of the highly competitive and political process of securing one of only 34 revenue sharing slots for the calendar year," notes Rance Pow, president of the Shanghai-based cinema consulting firm Artisan Gateway.

Regardless of whether Legendary remains a Western company in the eyes of the authorities, with Wanda at the negotiating table, there's a good chance the studio will be able to snag an extra quota slot each year in China's bruising, zero-sum film import sweepstakes.

"That would certainly be a benefit that could not have been achieved otherwise," says Conner.

Mermaid (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69162-The-Mermaid)
Great Wall (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?64980-The-Great-Wall)
Captain America (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69131-Captain-America-Civil-War)

[GeneChing]

AMC Entertainment CEO Open to Allowing Texting in Some Theaters (http://variety.com/2016/film/news/amc-texting-theaters-phones-1201752978/)
Brent Lang Senior Film and Media Reporter @BrentALang

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/moviegoers_new.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1
CAIAIMAGE/REX SHUTTERSTOCK
APRIL 13, 2016 | 03:54PM PT

Adam Aron has been head of AMC Entertainment for less than four months, but in that short time he’s already orchestrated one of the most significant deals in the country’s history. In February, AMC announced that it has an agreement to buy Carmike, propelling it from being the second-biggest exhibitor in the country to the world’s top movie theater chain.

Aron has a diverse resume, having been head of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, CEO and co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team, chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts and president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line. But in an industry dominated by lifers, he is a newcomer to the exhibition space.

That’s giving him a willingness to experiment. He’s pushing to expand AMC’s food options, bolster its loyalty program and market more aggressively. Some moves may ruffle feathers. In a bid to attract younger, smartphone savvy consumers, Aron said he was open to making some theaters texting and mobile device-friendly.

That may make him unpopular. When Regal Entertainment CEO Amy Miles mused in 2012 that theaters should consider experimenting with relaxing cellphone bans, the blowback was intense.

Aron sat down with Variety during CinemaCon, the annual exhibition trade show unfolding this week in Las Vegas, to discuss the planned merger with Carmike, ticketing advances and Screening Room, the controversial start-up that wants to debut movies in the home the same day they hit theaters.

You’ve worked in a number of different industries, but you’re new to exhibition. What perspective do you bring?

Coming in fresh, it seems like there’s lots of opportunity to propel revenues or to give consumers better experiences. AMC has been a leader in that regard for a few years now, but I think we will pick up even more of a reputation for that going forward. Already, having been here a couple of months, I know we can step up our marketing activity in a big way. The food that we serve in our theaters can be much more exciting than the current stable of chicken tenders, hot dogs, pizza, in addition to the standard soda and popcorn and candy. A lot of change is possible in this industry for the betterment of our shareholders and our customers.

Marketing costs money. Why do you think it’s worth the expense?

Next year, assuming the Carmike acquisition is consummated, AMC is going to have in the neighborhood of $4 billion worth of revenue. It’s almost irresponsible for a company with $4 billion worth of revenue on the line not to aggressively market. That’s one of the things that can ensure that the $4 billion comes in, and that’s one of the things that can ensure that more than $4 billion comes in. We wouldn’t be spending for additional marketing if we didn’t think we’d be driving big revenue gains.

Are there particular demographics that you plan to target with your marketing?

We ought to be looking at three things. People who are already interested in movies and maybe in a big way, where if we up our game, we could get them to come to more movies. That’s one of the reasons to have a better loyalty program with bigger, broader participation, because loyalty programs work. We can convince people who think they are seeing the most movies they can possibly see to go to more movies.

The second is market share we can take from our competitors if we market AMC better than they market their theaters.

And third, there does seem to be a consensus that there are pockets of consumers who do not see as many movies as other segments of the population and that we can be doing more to attract those people. Millennials come to mind. We need to reshape our product in some concrete ways so that millennials go to movie theaters with the same degree of intensity as baby boomers went to movie theaters throughout their lives.

Would appealing to millennials involve allowing texting or cellphone use?

Yes. When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, don’t ruin the movie, they hear please cut off your left arm above the elbow. You can’t tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That’s not how they live their life.

At the same time, though, we’re going to have to figure out a way to do it that doesn’t disturb today’s audiences. There’s a reason there are ads up there saying turn off your phone, because today’s moviegoer doesn’t want somebody sitting next to them texting or having their phone on.

Would you have a certain section for texting?

That’s one possibility. What may be more likely is we take specific auditoriums and make them more texting friendly.

There are reports that you have signed a letter of intent to partner with Screening Room. What is your position on the company?

I’m not commenting publicly on Screening Room. I know it’s a topic of hot debate amongst my brethren and sister-en, and I prefer to keep our counsel private right now. Until such time as Screening Room is real, we don’t have to spend a lot of time talking about it publicly.

How open are you to different distribution strategies that might modify the theatrical window?

For all the talk of the Paramount test a year ago [Editor’s note: AMC signed a deal that allowed the studio to debut two films on home entertainment early] and all the talk of Screening Room now, you may be surprised to hear that I think windows are very important. There’s a lot of evidence that shorter windows put theatrical exhibitors at risk. Studios themselves benefit from posting big global box office numbers, which comes from theatrical distribution.

So I start from a general premise that I’m a big fan of windows. Having said that, I’m also a big fan of experimenting and testing on everything that we do to see if there aren’t alternative ways of doing business. I generally look at our 385 theaters as laboratories where we can test lots of different concepts without being afraid that there’s going to be a cataclysmic, sky’s falling in, if we do. I believe in innovation and being imaginative and forward thinking. There are some bedrock principles though.

What are those bedrock principles?

I have two bedrock principles and only two bedrock principles. One is that it’s our burden as managers of the company that runs movie theaters to make sure that the moviegoing experience is as wonderful and spectacular as it possibly can be. The surest way to grow our business and protect it against erosion is to make sure that going to an AMC theater is a pleasing and memorable experience.

The second is the consumer is king. Giving the consumer more choices, more amenities and price points. If we put ourselves in the head of our customer and design our theatrical experience and marketing activity to make their lives better, we’ll have a successful company. Other than that we’ll be flexible and willing to experiment.

Where are you in terms of closing the Carmike acquisition?

There are really only two hurdles to go through. Carmike’s shareholders have to vote to approve the transaction. I expect that’s going to be some time in June. I don’t think they’ve set a date.

We need to get through the Justice Department approval, but we’re optimistic that we will get through both of these hurdles. The contract we have with Carmike requires that we get through this a year from the date of the merger transaction, so early in the first quarter of 2017. It would be nice if we could get it done before that.

What does the merger do for AMC?

By putting together the No. 2 and No. 4 players in the industry, we create a new No. 1 player. There’s extraordinary amounts of research that say that No. 1 players in industries are often the most successful players in their industries. If that turns out to be true, I’d rather be the No. 1 player than the No. 2 player.

Why did you recently sign a deal with ticketing app, Atom Tickets?

They’ve got a great social media platform where when you buy a ticket for a Wednesday night at 7:00 show, it sends a text message to all your friends asking if they want to go to the theater and sit next to you. They click a couple of buttons and your friend can buy a ticket at the same theater and showtime in a reserved seat. That’s a great concept and that’s one of the ways that we can make it easier for Millennials — who live on social media — to meet up with their friends in movie theaters.

Megan Fox delivered a pizza to your seat during Paramount’s CinemaCon presentation this week. What was that experience like?

They took the pizza away as quickly as they delivered it. It was warm, and I could smell it, but we didn’t get to eat it. I can’t tell you how it tasted, but in terms of who and how it was delivered, I can tell you that’s the best pizza delivery I’ve ever had.

Hold the phone, Aron is going to allow texters and gets his pizza delivered by Megan Fox (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?68299-Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles-2-Out-of-the-Shadows&p=1283416#post1283416)? That's so wrong. :mad:

[GeneChing]

Maybe I should change this post title to 'Wanda & AMC + Legendary'


Wanda Cinema Confirms Plan to Absorb Legendary (http://variety.com/2016/biz/asia/wanda-cinema-to-absorb-legendary-1201758737/)
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/the-dark-knight-marketing-campaign.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1
COURTESY OF WARNER BROS.
APRIL 21, 2016 | 05:25PM PT

China’s giant Dalian Wanda group has confirmed plans to absorb Legendary Entertainment into its Shenzhen-listed theaters subsidiary Wanda Cinema Line.

Wanda unveiled plans in January to acquire Legendary, producer of “The Dark Knight” and “Pacific Rim,” in January this year for up to $3.5 billion.

Shortly afterwards the property to hotels group began to reorganize its various entertainment assets. It has taken advantage of massive investor interest in the booming Chinese entertainment sector to bring in outside investors and reduce the cost to Wanda of the Legendary acquisition.

On several occasions Wanda group chairman Wang Jianlin had suggested new IPOs for the company’s film distribution and production operations. Though now it appears the group is favoring expansion of the existing Wanda Cinema Line.

In a brief regulatory filing Wanda Cinema Line said that it plans to issue new shares to buy units including Legendary. The filing gave no details of timing, pricing or management control and Wanda Cinema Line shares remianed suspended, as they have been since February.

[GeneChing]

Hollywood and China: A Fad or Future of the Film Industry? (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-china-a-fad-future-887134)
7:17 PM PDT 4/25/2016 by Rebecca Sun

http://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2016/04/committee_of_100s_hollywood__china_panel.jpg
From left: Tang, Emanuel, Gao, Gianopulos, Li, Ng, Simonds
BeBe Jacobs/Courtesy of Committee of 100

An all-star executive panel including Ari Emanuel, Jim Gianopulos, Bob Simonds and the head of Wanda Pictures discussed the future of the world's two largest film industires in Beverly Hills on April 16.

It's not easy to get busy Hollywood honchos like Ari Emanuel, Jim Gianopulos and Bob Simonds in a room together, but the lure of China will do the trick.

The Chinese movie market is on pace to surpass North America's as the world's largest next year, after growing an astounding 48.7 percent to hit $6.78 billion in 2015. "Nothing [else] today grows at that level," Gianopulos said on a panel hosted by the Chinese-American organization Committee of 100 on April 16 at the Beverly Wilshire. The Fox chair and CEO noted that since China's per-capita attendance and movie theater penetration rates are still dwarfed by the United States, "there's enormous potential to be had."

That belief has guided Simonds in establishing his two-year-old studio STX Entertainment, which counts Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital as its third-largest shareholder. "China had to be core to the fabric, not an add-on," said the chairman and CEO of STX, which struck an 18-picture slate deal with China's Huayi Brothers last year. "If you want a career lasting the next 20 years, you have to be relevant in China."

The panel was moderated by Simond's longtime friend Donald Tang, founder of Tang Media Partners and former head of Bear Stearns in China, who questioned the sustainability of Hollywood's love affair with China, considering the suitors (Japan, France, Canada, Germany) that had come and gone before.

Emanuel pointed out that one difference is that "it's not just Chinese companies coming here – a lot of us are moving our operations and opportunities to China," noting that he has flown to China around ten times in the last three months.

In a Hollywood Reporter cover story last month, the WME-IMG co-CEO was coy when asked to describe the agency's China strategy, calling it simply "a very important puzzle to solve." On Saturday's panel he provided a few more details, indicating that the rollout would begin with sports rights and partnerships for events. "We'll be going in full-blown with a couple of players that will take advantage of where we sit on the ground with participatory sports, and then migrating into film and TV assets and other things we're doing," he said, adding that the combined agency currently has about 100 executives in China. "IMG has been in China for 30 years, and we've established new relationships as well. And we're just now starting to move our entertainment assets into the territory."

Simonds noted that the size of China's domestic market sets it apart from previous foreign partners. "When we were taking money from the Japanese or the Germans, that was us offsetting risk and taking money because it was available," Simonds said. "America is great at exporting culture because we were the only country in the world with a big enough domestic market to have a muscular, vibrant movie and TV industry. That is about to change. For the first time, another country besides America is going to have a giant domestic market. China is about to become a major player in terms of storytelling."

That may shift the current trend of U.S.-China co-productions, which to date mostly have been characterized by Chinese financing of global Hollywood tentpoles. Li Ruigang, founding chairman of China Media Capital, which launched joint venture Flagship Entertainment with Warner Bros. last September to produce Chinese-language films, believes that such co-productions are simply "an interim product."

"The Chinese government is getting smarter at defining which movies are co-productions. If you just put very little Chinese elements inside, it probably will not work," he continued. "China stands not only for deep pockets, but also deep stomachs. And the demand in the domestic market is getting higher, but there are missing pieces in terms of the quality of the movies and how we can diversify the revenue sources instead of just relying on the box office."

"The industry there is still the wild, wild west. It's not even close to being heavily industrialized," said Wanda Cultural Industry Group vice president Jack Gao of the Chinese market, adding that a key objective of the Chinese conglomerate's multi-billion dollar acquisitions of AMC and Legendary has been self-education. "We're not pretending we're experts in the U.S. We have to learn by connecting to Hollywood, connecting to consumers and connecting to technology, and setting the right strategic investments."

Panelist Dominic Ng, chairman and CEO of East West Bank, noted that despite the record-breaking success of Chinese blockbusters like The Mermaid ($526.8 million in China) and Monster Hunt ($381.9 million), those movies have not succeeded outside the domestic market.

Simonds chalked that up to an issue of cultural differences in syntax, or the storytelling structure of the films. "Because we're an amalgamation of many different cultures, if an American film has enough universal themes, it can export to other countries," he explained. "Americans have conditioned the world to consume a story a certain way. The key is to merge or create a new syntax that's equally global."

Gianopulos agreed. "The U.S. has had a multicultural industry from the beginning, so by nature the movies were made for diverse audiences," he said, noting that Fox was able to adapt its Bride Wars for China (via its partnership with Bona Film Group) and Alibaba will remake its Night at the Museum. "If China is going to develop an export business, it needs a willingness to accept diversity or the possibility that it may not be as rooted in the cultural form that it started with. That may be something to learn from Hollywood."

Ng posed a different vision of the future: "Right now everyone in China is coming to the U.S. to learn how to make a movie that caters to the global audience. That's a good strategy for now, but China will still grow because the population is so much bigger. Fifteen years from now a movie like Mermaid will do a billion in China. So is Hollywood going to switch gears to make Chinese movies?" The question provoked the session's loudest applause from the audience, composed of some of the wealthiest and most powerful Chinese-Americans in the country.

"The rich cultural history of China is something that hasn't fully been mined yet," Gianopulos acknowledged. "Friends in China are always telling me, 'There's this fable in China, you should get Jim Cameron to make this movie.' Here's the thing: If you give this fable to Hollywood and you ask it to make the fable for the world, by the time it comes back to China, you may not recognize it."

The executives all admitted that a true cross-cultural co-production has not yet succeeded. "There have been American films where you stuff some Chinese actors in it, or some Chinese films where you stuff some Americans in it, but a true co-production hasn't been cracked yet," Simonds said, adding that STX is making its own attempt with the upcoming Martin-Campbell directed The Foreigner, starring Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan. "But it will happen, and it will change everything."

Legendary is gambling $150 million on its fantasy epic The Great Wall, a co-production with China Film Group and LeVision, which Universal will release on Feb. 17, 2017. Gao predicted that it will be a "milestone," while Gianopulos raved about his set visit: "It was a staggering vision to see the level of effort and attention to detail that went into that project. The quality of the physical production is extraordinary."

"It will take many failures before the success will come about," said Ng (whose bank financed part of The Great Wall). He offered one resource as a pathway to a solution: "There are a lot of Chinese Americans aspiring to be in this industry. They know Chinese interests really well, and American styles really well. Many of them have not yet taken a big role in the industry, but hopefully smart execs on both ends will look into Chinese Americans, who are totally bicultural and understand what needs to be done to make co-productions effective and profitable and start tapping into these folks who are very good at making movies as well."

With all this buzz on the Great Wall (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?64980-The-Great-Wall), that film better be awesome

[GeneChing]

Just in case you read past this in the post above: "Alibaba will remake its Night at the Museum." I think this would be cool if it's a Chinese museum. Then the statues that would come alive would be like Buddha, Guanyin, Guan Gong and the Terracotta Warriors. Not to mention Tomb Guardians. ;)


China's Alibaba Pictures to Remake 'Night at the Museum' (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chinas-alibaba-pictures-remake-night-887597)
10:17 PM PDT 4/25/2016 by Rebecca Sun and Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2014/12/night_at_the_museum_secret_of_the_tomb_still_1.jpg

'Night at the Museum'
Joe Lederer

The project is the latest collaboration between Hollywood and the upstart studio established by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma.

Alibaba Pictures, the Chinese film studio established by Jack Ma's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, has acquired the rights to remake 20th Century Fox's Night at the Museum franchise.

The plans for a Chinese remake were mentioned in passing by Jim Gianopulos, CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, during a panel discussion at the Beverly Wilshire in Los Angeles on April 16.

A source in China with knowledge of the plans confirmed the agreement to THR. The project is understood to be in the early stages, with casting and a director yet to be secured.

Alibaba Pictures Group declined to comment.

The original Night at the Museum films, directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ben Stiller and the late Robin Williams, saw U.S. and international box office returns slide across the span of the franchise. Released in 2006, first film grossed $250 million in North America and $575 million worldwide, while the third picture earned $113.7 million in North America and $363.2 million worldwide in 2014. But in China, the trend has been reversed. The first film earned $8.3 million in the Middle Kingdom, while the third feature grossed $47 million. China's overall box office more than quadrupled during the same period.

Alibaba Pictures has invested in three Hollywood films from Paramount, but this will be its first remake of a major U.S. studio film. Last year, the upstart studio boarded Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, and last week it announced an investment in the forthcoming Paramount films Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and Star Trek Beyond.

Other signs of the studio's deepening Hollywood ties include a recent partnership with Skydance Media to co-finance and produce The Flying Tigers, a China-set WWII pic to be scripted by Braveheart writer Randall Wallace.

Later this year, the studio will release its much anticipated Chinese-language feature debut, The Ferryman, directed by Zhang Jiajia and produced by Wong Kar-wai.

[GeneChing]

Soon, they may own it all. :eek:


AMC Entertainment May Offer $1.3B For Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group – Report (http://deadline.com/2016/05/amc-entertainment-offer-1-3b-odeon-uci-cinemas-group-1201753810/)
by David Lieberman
May 11, 2016 3:06pm

http://i2.wp.com/pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/amctheatres_logogrid.jpg?crop=93px%2C64px%2C260px% 2C174px&resize=446%2C299&ssl=1

AMC Entertainment’s growth ambitions aren’t limited to its deal to buy Carmike, it seems: The exhibition chain, owned by China’s Wanda Group, is preparing to offer the equivalent of $1.3 billion for Europe’s Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group, Bloomberg reports.

Odeon & UCI is owned by Guy Hands’ private-equity company Terra Firma. He hired bankers last year to look for buyers. Wanda was known to be interested in the chain which has 2,238 screens at 242 theaters in the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Austria, and Portugal.

AMC declined to comment.

RBC Capital Markets’ Leo Kulp says he’s “surprised at the timing of the deal” since AMC has agreed to pay $1.1 billion (including debt) for Carmike.

The companies are waiting for the agreement to be approved by antitrust officials as well as Carmike shareholders. Two of its largest investors, Mittleman Brothers and Driehaus Capital Management, are opposed, saying AMC’s $30 a share offer is too low.

But AMC CEO Adam Aron, who took charge in January, has made it clear that he — and his company’s owner — have big ambitions. “Wanda has global aspirations and I think it will be intriguing to see what joint opportunity there is for AMC and Wanda,” he told Deadline in December.

Stifel Research’s Benjamin Mogil says he detects “a strategic shift” under Aron, what might be “tied to increased capital outflow restrictions in China.”

[GeneChing]

a half B gone. daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayum. :eek:


Wanda's Legendary Lost $500 Million in 2015, Chinese Filing Reveals (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wandas-legendary-lost-500-million-894103)
3:13 PM PDT 5/14/2016 by Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn3.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2016/05/thomas_tull_wang_jianlin_split_h_2016.jpg
Legendary founder Thomas Tull and Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group
Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage/Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As the Chinese conglomerate moves to merge Legendary with a publicly listed subsidiary, previously private financial data has been made public for the first time.

The recent financial performance of Thomas Tull's Legendary Entertainment was made public for the first time Thursday in a Chinese regulatory filing that reveals more than half a billion dollars in losses last year.

Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group acquired Legendary for what was announced as a $3.5 billion deal in January — the first time a major U.S. production company has come under Chinese control. (Though many in Hollywood and elsewhere say the actual price will turn out to be lower.)

Headed by Wang Jianlin, China's richest man, Wanda currently is in the process of merging its film production holdings — including Legendary — with a publicly traded subsidiary, Wanda Cinema Line, which is China's largest movie theater operator. Entertainment stocks have been particularly hot on the Chinese markets, and the maneuver is expected to raise large sums of capital as Wanda's production operations become accessible to Chinese investors. But the impending transaction also has forced Wanda to disclose previously private financial data on Legendary.

The 355 pages of new documents obtained by The Hollywood Reporter show Legendary, which has backed such highly profitable films as Jurassic World and the Dark Knight films but has had less success in producing its own films, suffered a loss of $343.4 million (2.43 billion RMB) in 2014 on revenue of $403.3 million (2.63 billion RMB). In 2015, the company's losses deepened to $555.6 million (3.63 billion RMB) on revenue of $462.1 million (3.02 billion RMB).

The document cites several key factors behind the losses: "a substantial increase in non-cash, stock-based compensation expenses amid accelerated vesting of management options, higher advertisement and promotion cost and write-downs."

The accelerated vesting of stock options is understood to have taken place as Legendary allowed senior management to cash out in anticipation of the Wanda acquisition. Write-downs included such Legendary-backed flops as Seventh Son (2014) — a $95 million-plus fantasy that grossed only $114 million — and Michael Mann's $70 million Blackhat, which earned just $19.6 million worldwide. Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak (2015) and Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs (2015) also were financial losers as part of Legendary's distribution arrangement with Universal Pictures.

Increased P&A costs could be attributed, in part, to the forthcoming release of Duncan Jones' $100 million-plus Warcraft, which is set for release in June. Legendary also wrapped production late last year on the $160 million China-U.S. co-production The Great Wall, which stars Matt Damon and Andy Lau, features English and Chinese dialog and is due out in 2017. The high-profile project is being closely watched as a test case for the viability of Chinese-themed global tentpoles.

While the losses are substantial, the numbers don't necessarily suggest that Wanda's chairman Wang got a bum deal in the acquisition, analysts say. The more common measure for valuations of media companies engaged in production activities is an EBITDA number (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), as it provides a clearer picture of operating performance. Other factors commonly considered are revenue multiples, distribution agreements, upcoming film slates, intellectual property pipeline, premium for control, along with other intangibles such as brand names and position in the market.

"Not only are all of those factors things Wanda considered in their acquisition, but they are factors that Wanda would want to be present in one way or another when they not only identified Legendary as a target but decided to proceed with the transaction," says Peter Schloss, managing partner of CastleHill Partners, a Beijing-based merchant bank specializing in the media and sports industries.

The documents reveal that Legendary's $3.5 billion price tag was 7.5x its 2015 revenue of $462.1 million (the next best measure since EBITDA numbers weren't disclosed) — "possibly on the high side, but not unreasonable," Schloss says.

The Wanda filing document also forecasts Legendary's combined net profits for 2016-2018 will be $474.8 million (RMB 3.1 billion). Net profit projections of this kind are unusual in the U.S. business community. Its inclusion was most likely a filing requirement under Shenzhen Stock Exchange rules.

According to financial sources familiar with Chinese to U.S. accounting calculations, Wanda's net profit forecast translates to approximately $640 million EBITDA for 2016-2018.

Wanda and Legendary have both declined to comment.

[GeneChing]

Hold the phone...Wanda (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69324-Wanda-amp-AMC)? :eek:


Sources: Two groups post bids in $4.1 billion range to buy UFC (http://espn.go.com/mma/story/_/id/16258572/bidding-buy-ufc-drawing-closer-conclusion)
Jun 17, 2016
Darren Rovell ESPN Senior Writer

Bidding to buy the UFC is drawing closer to an end, sources told ESPN on Thursday.

The two bidding groups -- WME-IMG in conjunction with Dalian Wanda Group, and China Media Capital -- had similar bids in the $4.1 billion range, sources said.

Sources said that both bidding groups are still trying to completely finance the buyout, which would be for the entire company. Which company ultimately wins out might depend on the details of that financing. Sources say WME co-chair Ari Emanuel has been asking well-heeled investors to chip in between $25 million and $50 million.

One of those investors that said yes, according to sources, was the Kraft Group, which owns the New England Patriots and the New England Revolution. A Kraft Group spokesman declined comment.

The WME-IMG bid with Dalian is also said to include China's Tencent Holdings, one of the 10 largest internet companies in the world and ESPN's official digital partner in the region. State-backed investment firm China Media Capital has been bankrolling many projects, including a five-year broadcast-rights deal with China's top-tier soccer league worth $1.3 billion.

Reached Thursday, UFC president Dana White said he had no comment.

Last month, ESPN reported that the entire UFC organization was actively up for sale and that bids were in the $3.5 billion to $4 billion range.

At the time, White denied that Zuffa, which bought the UFC for $2 million in 2001, was in an active bidding process.

Sources say that although White denied details of the sale publicly, the UFC forced partners to sign more extensive confidentiality agreements after the leak.

Zuffa, a company set up by brothers Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, owns about 80 percent of the venture, and Abu Dhabi's Flash Entertainment bought a 10 percent piece for an undisclosed sum in 2010. White, who is expected to be asked to stay in some capacity should a sale go through, also has a share.

While the UFC has developed into quite a business, with a rights deal on the horizon that could very well double to more than $200 million a year beginning in 2019, the business is volatile. The UFC has kept its financial cards close to its vest, but Lorenzo Fertitta told CNN that the business grossed about $600 million last year.

The UFC is undoubtedly coming off its best year thanks to the emergence of Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey, but the return of Rousey -- who is represented by WME-IMG -- is uncertain, and both fighters are facing the prospect of their second losses in as many bouts. With both out for UFC 200, the brand was forced to make a big move to ensure that the event had some shine. It worked with Brock Lesnar to set up his one-off return to the Octagon despite his WWE contract.

Dalian Wanda has recently invested in more sports properties. Last year, it bought a 20 percent stake in soccer superpower Atletico Madrid for $48 million. In March, the company became a top-tier FIFA sponsor through 2030.

[GeneChing]

I copied the post above across two other threads. Now I gotta copy this one too. :mad:


JUN 21, 2016 @ 03:17 PM 6,236 VIEWS The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets
Despite Reports, Billionaire Fertitta Brothers' UFC Isn't Being Sold, Company Insists (http://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2016/06/21/despite-reports-billionaire-fertitta-brothers-ufc-isnt-being-sold-company-insists/#bff76ee345ca)
Noah Kirsch , CONTRIBUTOR
I write about the 1% that sits on top of the world.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

http://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/9765333caf82483fb16824dfdaa69d02/960x0.jpg?fit=scale
UFC owners, from left, Frank Fertitta III, Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta. (AP Photo/Eric Jamison)

The Ultimate Fighting Championship isn’t going anywhere– at least not for now.

Yesterday, the reported sale of the mixed martial arts promoter made waves across the MMA online community. The deal, reportedly led by two Chinese billionaire-helmed investment groups, was rumored to be worth $4.2 billion dollars.

Those accounts now appear to be untrue.

“[The] report indicating that the UFC has been sold is false. We’ve communicated that to our staff members via an internal memo,” a spokeswoman for the UFC told this reporter.

Speculations about a potential deal have been circulating for months. In May, UFC President Dana White denied that the organization was in “advanced” talks to be purchased, telling the Las Vegas Review-Journal that “The UFC [was] not for sale.” At the time, the bidders involved in the negotiations were reported to be WME/IMG, The Blackstone Group, and two Chinese investors, billionaire Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group and China Media Capital. Dalian Wanda, along with another Chinese conglomerate, Tencent Holdings (headed by billionaire Ma Huateng, known as Pony Ma) was said to lead Monday’s purported sale.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is wholly owned by Zuffa, a company founded by billionaire brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta. The casino magnates purchased the UFC, then on the verge of bankruptcy, for $2 million in 2001. Since then, mixed martial arts has become one of the fastest growing sectors in professional sports, and the promoter’s fights are now broadcast to over 1 billion homes in 149 different countries.

That growth has not come without a cost. As FORBES wrote last week, Zuffa holds $475 million in debt obligations, which both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have rated “non-investment grade”–otherwise known as junk bonds. Those liabilities prompted the initial speculation that Zuffa, which is principally owned by the Fertitta brothers, alongside minority stakeholders Dana White and Flash Entertainment, was willing to sell.

For now, the UFC, which took in an estimated $600 million in 2015 revenue, is staying put. The rumors, however, are certain to persist.

[GeneChing]

...or maybe they'll collapse under their own weight, like the megabook stores killed the book industry, and everything will shift to home entertainment. :rolleyes:


AMC Entertainment to Buy Europe’s Biggest Theater Chain for $1.2 Billion (http://www.thewrap.com/amc-entertainment-to-buy-europes-biggest-theater-chain-for-1-2-billion/)
MOVIES | By Thom Geier on July 12, 2016 @ 4:29 am

http://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/amc-theatres.jpg

AMC Theatres announced deal to acquire London-based Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group
China-controlled AMC Entertainment continues its global expansion, announcing plans on Tuesday to acquire Europe’s largest movie theater chain for $1.2 billion.
London-based Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group has been in the hands of Guy Hands’ Terra Firma private equity outfit.
AMC, which is also finalizing its acquisition of Georgia-based U.S. exhibitor Carmike, announced it would pay 75 percent in cash and 25 percent in stock for Odeon. The companies expect to complete the deal by the end of the year.
Odeon & UCI oversee 242 theaters and 2,236 screens, selling 90 million tickets annually, according to MarketWatch.
With the acquisitions, AMC’s holdings would include 627 theaters and 7,600-plus screens in eight countries.
“While we acknowledge that there are some uncertainties related to Brexit, we are encouraged that current currency rates are highly favorable to AMC with the pound falling to a three decade low versus the dollar,” AMC CEO Adam Aron said in a statement.
AMC Theatres is owned by the AMC Entertainment Group, a majority-owned subsidiary of China’s Dalian Wanda Group. Wanda Group already runs China’s largest exhibitor.
In March, AMC announced plans to acquire Carmike for roughly $1.1 billion in a deal that would create the world’s largest theater chain.
“AMC remains committed to moving forward with our plan to acquire Carmike Cinemas,” Aron said Tuesday.
But Aron repeated his warning from June 30 that the Carmike deal was “at considerable risk.”
“Some Carmike shareholders have an unrealistic view as to Carmike’s value to AMC, and their resulting price expectations are simply beyond what AMC believes is prudent to pay,” he said.

[GeneChing]

Interesting play. Makes sense...dollars and cents...or maybe I should say yuan. ;)


Here's Why Paramount Needs the Wanda Deal (https://www.thestreet.com/story/13640621/1/here-s-why-paramount-needs-the-wanda-deal.html?puc=applenews&cm_ven=APPLENEWS)
As the Chinese film market continues to grow, Paramount risks getting left behind. This deal may be a lifeline.
Buster Coen Jul 14, 2016 4:52 PM EDT

https://s.thestreet.com/files/tsc/v2008/photos/contrib/uploads/paramountpictures_600x400.jpg

On Thursday morning, the news broke that China's Dalian Wanda Group Co. was in talks with Viacom (VIAB) to buy a 49% minority stake in Paramount Pictures. Given the Viacom soap opera that has seen majority share owner Sumner Redstone and CEO Phillippe Dauman struggle for control of the company, the deal is far from a sure thing, but it would be a boon for Paramount were it to go through.

That's because Wanda has strong ties to the Chinese movie industry, which has been expanding at a breakneck pace over the course of the past five years. The conglomerate owns Wanda Cinemas, China's main cinema operator, and Legendary Entertainment, the studio behind huge Middle Kingdom hits such as "Pacific Rim" and "Warcraft." Were Paramount to become partially owned by Wanda, it would have a huge conglomerate invested in the success of its movies in what is soon to be the world's largest film market.

"If you have an outpost in the country where you're going to do the biggest business, you can really mold that movie, both on the creative side and the marketing side, to get a bigger bang for your buck in China," says ComScore (SCOR) analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

A partnership between Paramount and Wanda would also facilitate the process of securing Chinese releases for the studio's films. China allows just 34 non-Chinese films to be released every year, and when a studio does get a release in the Middle Kingdom for one of its films, it typically only sees 25% of the movie's box office returns there. Allowing Wanda to buy a stake in Paramount could begin to solve both problems.

"The deal would allow more foreign films to bypass Chinese censors, plus ease various market restrictions like box office revenue splits," says Shawn Robbins, senior analyst at BoxOffice.com.

The hypothetical stake purchase would certainly have an effect on the accessibility of content, but could it also affect the content itself? A stake purchase by Wanda would not necessarily be likely to alter the creative vision of Paramount, but studios have increasingly been producing content with Chinese audiences in mind anyways. A deal with Wanda may accelerate that process, and assist in maximizing the outreach of Paramount films.

Take Legendary Entertainment, which was acquired by Wanda back in April. The studio released "Warcraft" to record-breaking box office results in China, aided by Wanda Cinema Line, which fully supported the movie in its theaters. Wanda also arranged for promotional seat covers which allowed moviegoers to choose the side of the Horde or the Alliance, the two groups at war in the "Warcraft" film. If it weren't for Chinese box office returns, the movie would have been a huge dud, which speaks to the power of having a conglomerate like Wanda behind one's back in the Middle Kingdom.

And indeed, the studio's upcoming movies seem primed to make bank in China. "Legendary's upcoming release slate is well suited for major Asian markets," Robbins says. He points out that the studio has three Godzilla-related movies in the pipeline, as well as an American-Chinese 3D fantasy film about the Great Wall of China. And if Legendary can successfully land the rights to a Pokemon film--well, there's no telling how high the box office might go with the help of Wanda.

Paramount could reap the same benefits that Legendary has if its shareholders accept the deal. The box office results speak for themselves; China is where studios now need to be looking for revenue, and a deal with Wanda could give Paramount the leg-up on the competition that it desperately needs.

"For a Chinese company to buy a huge stake in an iconic Paramount--it tells you where the money is," says Dergarabedian. "It's all about the growth in China." If Viacom shareholders cannot realize that, they may just be digging their own graves.

[GeneChing]

JUL 25, 2016 @ 08:17 AM The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets
AMC Theatres Ups Takeover Bid For Carmike Cinemas To $1.2 Billion (http://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2016/07/25/amc-theatres-ups-takeover-bid-for-carmike-cinemas-to-1-2-billion/#434284bc1e55)
Natalie Robehmed
FORBES STAFF
I cover media and entertainment.

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/natalierobehmed/files/2016/02/0208_wang-jianlin-amc_1200x675-1200x675.jpg
China’s richest man Wang Jianlin, who controls AMC, is hoping to soon count Carmike among his cinematic real estate (Photo credit: David Yellin for Forbes)

AMC Theatres, which had previously agreed to acquire Carmike Cinemas for $1.1 billion, has sweetened its offer by 10% to $1.2 billion after Carmike shareholders opposed the low pricetag.

AMC Theatres, owned by China’s richest man Wang Jianlin, will now hope to acquire the nation’s fourth-largest exhibitor in a $1.2 billion cash and stock deal inclusive of debt, Carmike said Monday. The merger will form the country’s largest chain with over 600 theaters in the most recent acquisition of a U.S. company by a Chinese-owned business.

The transaction will give Carmike’s stockholders the option to choose between $33.06 in cash per share or 1.0819 shares of AMC’s Class A common stock, a premium of some 32% over Carmike’s closing March 3 stock price (the last trading day prior to Carmike/AMC’s original agreement). The hefty pricetag comes for $585 million in cash and $250 million in AMC’s Class A common stock to be paid to Carmike shareholders plus net debt.

“The revised merger agreement provides significant additional value to Carmike stockholders and enables our stockholders to now participate in the potential upside of a combined AMC-Carmike,” said Carmike CEO David Passman. “Our Board unanimously believes that this transaction is… in the best interest of all Carmike stockholders.”

It marks a 10.2% increase of AMC’s original all-cash offer of $30 a share, which was originally agreed upon in March. Carmike’s largest shareholders, investment firms Mittleman Brothers and Driehaus Capital Management, said the original price was too low. Some thought a value of $40 a share was more equitable.

“This latest agreement between AMC and Carmike is our best and final offer for Carmike,” said AMC CEO Adam Aron.

Carmike Cinemas Inc. (CKEC) Stock Price (http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/803565/Carmike-Cinemas-Inc-in-Columbus-GA?utm_source=viz&utm_medium=viz.referral&utm_campaign=viz.ref.7466&utm_viz_id=5QZUsv80Pr&utm_pubreferrer=www.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fnataliero behmed%2F2016%2F07%2F25%2Famc-theatres-ups-takeover-bid-for-carmike-cinemas-to-1-2-billion%2F)

Carmike shareholders were scheduled to vote on a transaction this morning; the increased bid means it will postpone the vote.

The acquisition is the latest in a string for Wang’s Dalian Wanda Group, which purchased AMC Cinemas in 2012 for $2.6 billion. The real estate and media conglomerate in 2015 acquired the Australian cinema chain Hoyts Group for $344 million. This year, it snapped up Hollywood co-financing-turned-producing outfit Legendary Entertainment in a $3.5 billion deal and is thought to be one of the leading bidders in a minority stake in Viacom's VIAB -0.36% Paramount. AMC agreed earlier in July to acquire U.K. cinema chain Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group for $1.2 billion (£921 million) net debt, taking prime advantage of favorable exchange rates on the weaker British pound post-Brexit.

When its Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group deal closes, AMC will be the largest film exhibitor in the world; finalizing its acquisition of Carmike will only strengthen that monopoly.

Pending antitrust approval and sign off from Carmike shareholders, the deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

If this goes through, what cinemas won't be owned by Wanda?

[GeneChing]

Big news on Wanda today. This is #1 of 3.


Wanda Scraps $5.6B Plan to Merge Legendary With Other Movie Assets (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wanda-scraps-56b-plan-merge-916142)
9:47 AM PDT 8/1/2016 by Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn3.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2016/05/thomas_tull_wang_jianlin_split_h_2016.jpg
Thomas Tull (left), Wang Jianlin
Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage/Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The company said that Legendary must prove that it can earn a profit on its own before a planned merger of its movie businesses can go forward.
Dalian Wanda Group, the Chinese real estate and investment conglomerate headed by China's richest man, Wang Jianlin, has abandoned its plan to fold Legendary Entertainment into the group's publicly listed movie theater subsidiary.

In April, Wanda Group announced that it would merge Legendary and Chinese movie-production subsidiary Wanda Media with its publicly listed movie theater chain business, Wanda Cinema Line Co. But in a regulatory filing with the Shenzhen stock exchange Monday, Wanda Cinema said that market conditions had changed and the deal was premature. A deal at this time wouldn’t be in the best interest of minority investors, it added.

The company said that Legendary, which it acquired for $3.5 billion in January, should show its ability to turn a profit on its own prior to a merger. The Hollywood Reporter reported in May that Legendary had lost over $500 million in 2015. In Monday's statement, Wanda reiterated its expectation that Legendary would become profitable this year.

The company said it may reconsider the restructuring plan again in 2017. It will hold an investor presentation later in the week to clarify its plans.

[GeneChing]

#2 of 3 for today


AMC Has Bright Future Despite Earnings Miss (https://www.thestreet.com/story/13659935/1/amc-has-bright-future-despite-earnings-miss.html?puc=applenews&cm_ven=APPLENEWS)
The theater chain, which is a subsidiary of China's Wanda Group, had a tough quarter but is looking good for the future.
Buster Coen Buster Coen Follow Aug 1, 2016 4:02 PM EDT

https://s.thestreet.com/files/tsc/v2008/photos/contrib/uploads/amctheaters_600x400.jpg

Earnings from AMC's (AMC) Q2 missed Wall Street expectations on Monday morning, as the entertainment company, which is a subsidiary of China's Wanda Group, reported revenue of $764 million, down 7% year-over-year. The company also reported diluted earnings per share of 24 cents, down 47% from the 45 cents EPS last year.

As TheStreet predicted back in June, flagging movie attendance was mostly to blame for the poor showing. Admissions revenue was down 10% to $481.2 million on attendance of 50 million. Several movies performed below industry expectations, including, "Neighbors 2," "Alice Through the Looking Glass," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows," and "Independence Day: Resurgence."

All of those movies are sequels, and their underperformance is indicative of a tough landscape for franchise fare. Exhibitors like AMC have good reason to be nervous about the disappointing results for these films, as sequels have typically taken in the largest box office numbers in the modern era.

However, investors likely have no reason to worry. The Q3 film slate looks to be more promising for the company, as "The Secret Life of Pets" has already overperformed and "Suicide Squad" looks to break out next weekend. And as has been reported here at TheStreet, AMC is undertaking a series of premium moviegoing initiatives that are bound to pad its earnings in the future.

What's more, AMC has been in the acquisitions business lately. The theater chain recently made a deal to absorb Odeon and UCI Cinema Group, Europe's largest theater chain. And AMC recently upped its offer to acquire Carmike Cinemas to $1.2 billion, which Carmike shareholders will likely find hard to reject.

[GeneChing]

That's a lot of lateral movement for Wanda. Something's afoot perhaps?


China’s Wanda Teams With RealD to Add 4,000 New 3D Screens (http://www.thewrap.com/chinas-wanda-teams-with-reald-to-add-4000-new-3d-screens/)
MOVIES | By Matt Pressberg on August 1, 2016 @ 4:42 pm

http://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dalian-wanda.jpg
Dalian Wanda

China’s largest theater chain will have at least 5,600 RealD screens
China’s Wanda Cinema Line, the country’s biggest theater chain, and 3D technology firm RealD announced Monday that they have agreed on the largest 3D installation in the history of the format, which will add at least 4,000 new RealD screens to Wanda’s multiplexes.
Wanda Cinema Line currently operates 320 theaters and 2,789 screens, mostly in China, but also in major cities in Australia and New Zealand. Wanda has 1,600 screens already equipped with RealD technology and the new deal will bring that up to a minimum of 5,600.
“As audiences throughout China continue to seek more and more 3D content, Wanda is investing in the very best systems and technology that allow for the highest quality presentation of 3D movies,” Wanda Cinema Line executive president Xiaobin Liu said in a statement announcing the deal. “Our RealD equipped theaters have been a significant part of our growth strategy and we are pleased to expand our partnership with RealD with this history making installation agreement.”
Also Read: Dalian Wanda Exploring Paramount Minority Stake Purchase for Billions
“China has steadily become the world’s most significant 3D market and the scale of this installation agreement signals an unprecedented commitment to the growth of 3D in this critically important entertainment region,” RealD CEO Michael V. Lewis said in the statement.
Wanda’s RealD deal is the latest move by the exhibitor to deepen its relationships with the biggest names — and biggest screens — in theater technology as it competes for a rapidly growing audience in what could be the world’s biggest box office as soon as 2017.
Wanda is the world’s No. 1 IMAX customer and is responsible for 16 percent of its global revenue. IMAX is expected to add 115 screens in China alone this year (there were only 1,061 worldwide at the beginning of the year), with 60 of them slated for Wanda theaters.
Wanda also signed a deal with Dolby Labs in January to install 100 of its premium-format Dolby Cinema theaters in China over the next five years.
And the competition is arming itself as well — late last year, Wanda rival China Film Group opened its first Barco Escape theater, a three-screen format that gives the audience an immersive, ****pit-style view of the action.

[GeneChing]

Tue Aug 23, 2016 1:18pm EDT
Exclusive: China's richest man set to seal two billion-dollar U.S. film deals (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dalianwanda-chairman-idUSKCN10Y13K)
By Matthew Miller and Shu Zhang | BEIJING

Real estate and entertainment conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group Co expects to seal two billion-dollar film-related deals in the United States this year, chairman Wang Jianlin said on Tuesday, as China's richest man steps up his push into Hollywood.

After completing the acquisition of two non-production film companies - each worth above $1 billion - Dalian Wanda's next target would be a so-called "Big Six" movie studio, Wang told Reuters in an exclusive interview.

"My goal is to buy Hollywood companies and bring their technology and capability to China," Wang said.

He declined to elaborate on the two deals in the pipeline, which would further bolster Wanda's motion picture empire.

In January, Wang splashed $3.5 billion to buy a controlling stake in U.S. film studio Legendary Entertainment, behind hits such as "Jurassic World", making Wanda the first Chinese firm to own a major Hollywood studio.

Dalian Wanda, which was added to the Fortune Global 500 list this year, aims to triple revenue from its cultural division, led by entertainment, sports and tourism, to 150 billion yuan ($22.6 billion) by 2020.

Reuters reported last month that Wanda has held talks with Viacom Inc (VIAB.O) about acquiring its stake in Paramount Pictures, one of Hollywood's "Big Six" studios that also include Twentieth Century Fox (FOXA.O), Warner Brothers (TWX.N), Walt Disney (DIS.N), Universal Pictures (CMCSA.O) and Columbia (6758.T).

"We are interested not only in Paramount, but all of them. If one of the Big Six would be willing to be sold to us, we would be interested," Wang said.

"Only the six are real global film companies, while the rest are not. If we are to build a real movie empire, this is a necessary step."
http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20160823&t=2&i=1150727625&w=&fh=&fw=&ll=780&pl=468&sq=&r=LYNXNPEC7M0IR
Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Wanda Group, poses for pictures after an interview in Beijing, China, August 23, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Dalian Wanda is leading a slew of Chinese firms that are investing in Hollywood. They include Fosun International, which has invested in Studio 8, a production company started by former Warner Brothers executive Jeff Robinov, and Huayi Brothers Media Corp (300027.SZ), which is producing films with STX Entertainment, a studio invested in by Chinese private equity company Hony Capital.

Dalian Wanda would also start co-investing in global blockbusters next year, Wang added.

A SCREEN NEAR YOU

The Chinese conglomerate, which began as a property developer in the northeastern city of Dalian, was also looking to extend the world's biggest motion picture theater network, Wang said.

Following the completion of its acquisitions of London-based Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group and Carmike Cinemas Inc (CKEC.O) in the United States, Dalian Wanda would control 15 percent of global box office revenues, Wang said, and may reach its goal of controlling 20 percent earlier than its target of 2020.

Wang, who has also bought Swiss sports marketing firm Infront Sports & Media AG and World Triathlon Corp, owner of the "Ironman" franchise, said he was primarily interested in acquiring entertainment and sports companies in the United States and Europe.

"If the target company fits our appetite, there is no upper limit for budgeting," he said.

But he cautioned that too many investors were rushing into the "hot" film market.

"Most of the money invested in China, and even the global film industry, is silly money. Only a little is smart money," he said.

"As China's film industry growth slows to below 20 percent, or even 10 percent, 8 percent this year, some will be washed out. It's like Warren Buffett said, 'you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out'."

IPO OR BACKDOOR LISTING

Separately, Wang said that Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co (3699.HK), Wanda's real estate flagship, would re-list on the Shanghai stock exchange either through an initial public offering (IPO) or a backdoor listing.

Shareholders of the Hong Kong-listed firm last week approved a buy-out offer that would see the firm privatized.

The company said earlier this month it planned to de-list from the Hong Kong stock exchange on Sept. 20.

Wang said both options were on the table for the planned Shanghai re-listing. Approval for an IPO could take two or three years, while a backdoor listing would require more than a year, he added.

Mainland-listed firms typically command higher valuations than those traded in Hong Kong, helped by a large pool of retail investors.

But Wang said the "core problem" that triggered the de-listing plan was not the low valuation of the company's Hong Kong shares, but the lack of liquidity.

"We only listed 14 percent of the company in Hong Kong, which means 86 percent of shares are neither liquid nor could be pledged as collateral," Wang said. "That's not a real listed company."

($1 = 6.6533 Chinese yuan renminbi)

There's a vid too, if you follow the link.

[GeneChing]

A: World domination, obviously. :rolleyes:


What Is Fueling Wanda’s Hollywood Dealmaking? (http://variety.com/2016/biz/asia/what-is-fueling-wandas-hollywood-dealmaking-1201843717/)
Patrick Frater
Asia Bureau Chief

http://i1.wp.com/pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/wang-jianlin-rexfeatures_5768317a-res2.jpg?crop=0px%2C6px%2C1650px%2C919px&resize=670%2C377&ssl=1
PHOTO BY GERRY SHIH/AP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
AUGUST 24, 2016 | 06:55PM PT

Wang Jianlin, the 64 year-old chairman of China’s Dalian Wanda group, is in too much of a hurry to worry about having his corporate wrist slapped by regulators over a shelved plan to absorb Legendary Entertainment into Wanda Pictures.

Wanda announced its $3.5 billion acquisition of Legendary in January and immediately set about refinancing the group’s film unit through restructurings and select share sales to a couple of dozen corporate and institutional investors. With Legendary as the Hollywood allure at its core, the unit was attributed a valuation of $5.7 billion.

That it didn’t meet with approval from the CSRC in July was a blow, but not one that has blown Wanda off its financial track or dulled Wang’s desire to expand further – much further — in the movie industry.

This week Wang spelled out clearer than any Chinese businessman has ever done previously, that he wants of own one of Hollywood’s big six studios. In an interview with Reuters, he described the six MPA members as the “only real film companies” in the world and that owning one would be a “necessary step” in his ambition to build a real movie empire.

But even that will not be enough. Shining some light on his upcoming deal pipeline, Wang said that this year would also see Wanda involved in two other deals each worth $1 billion involving Hollywood companies.

Sources close to Wang, who were not authorized to speak on behalf of the group, say that Wanda is looking for strategic deals, not ones that are only grounded on financial reasons. Target firms will likely own or control significant intellectual property and have the potential to be scaled up to become global players.

That makes U.S. enterprises a priority. And Wang’s commitment to stateside expansion is said to be for the long term. Wanda’s controversial Beverly Hills headquarters project may be a tangible sign of the scale of Wang’s U.S. goals.

Target companies will likely be required to have expertise or assets that can flow back to China and benefit the emerging industries that serve the country’s growing middle classes. Lifestyle demands for entertainment, leisure travel and healthcare are ballooning.

In the near term, Wang is said to favor film and sports corporations over TV. But media technology, location based entertainment and Internet companies could also be on the agenda.

He makes that case that the rise of China — and the rise of China’s box office in particular – has been of benefit to Hollywood. It represented a new market opportunity that opened up at a time when home entertainment and pay-TV markets were weakening in North American, and Europe was stagnating. Wanda’s deal making is expected to reflect that.

Wang, who is always groomed and business smart, sometime appears to let his hair down and let slip a loose-lipped boast. But such apparent slip-ups may also be well-calculated devices to shake out more deal targets and to bring in more partners. Or simply they may be uttered to keep his gigantic group looking like it is going forward as nimbly as a younger, smaller player.

Those close to Wang say he is determined to transform Wanda from unsexy property developer into the world’s largest media-entertainment-leisure conglomerate. His detractors say that the cultural industry expansion is camouflage for activities that are still property plays at base.

His studio-film festival center at Qingdao may be an example. It is possible that his bid for the land may not have emerged as winner had Wanda not pitched the coastal city a cultural plan rather than, say, office blocks or an industrial park. The studios are scheduled to open in 2017, but some apartment blocks have already been completed and sold off.

Similarly, Wanda’s multiplexes undoubtedly drive footfalls into the company’s Wanda Plaza malls in China. It opened two more malls this month.

Wang sees no contradiction. Hotels, theme parks and movie studios need sound project management skills and the large amounts of capital that asset-rich property companies can provide.

What Wang is openly trying to do is make his assets go further. He has called it “asset light” development. That means bringing in partner financiers and also diversifying into areas that require fewer tangible assets.

In the past two years that has brought the Legendary deal, but also acquisitions of Philippe Blatter’s Infront sports marketing firm and the World Triathlon Corporation, organizer of the Ironman competitions.

The next round of deals may show how far Wanda is willing to stray from its roots.

[GeneChing]

Wonder what Wanda's theme will be? The diversification-away-from-hard-core-property-development rollercoaster?


China’s Wanda to Build $9 Billion Theme Park (http://variety.com/2016/biz/asia/wanda-to-build-9-billion-theme-park-1201845367/)
Patrick Frater
Asia Bureau Chief

http://i1.wp.com/pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/wang-jianlin-at-jinan-20160826040330812.jpg?crop=0px%2C23px%2C550px%2C30 6px&resize=670%2C377&ssl=1
COURTESY OF DALIAN WANDA
AUGUST 26, 2016 | 06:50AM PT

Dalian Wanda group Friday signed a co-development deal to build a theme park costing $9.4 billion (RMB63 billion) in the northern Chinese city of Jinan. The deal was signed with the government of the city, the capital of Shandong Province.

It will Wanda’s first park with a dominant sports theme and include a 10,000-seater ice hockey cum basketball stadium. Other facilities include a Wanda Mall, an outdoor theme park, a hotel cluster, large stage show and a bar street.

Jinan Wanda City is planned to break ground in 2017 and start operation in 202. The company said that it is expected to receive over 20 million tourists per year, create 20,000 jobs and generate large tax revenue for the local government. The park would be Wanda’s 13th city park out of a planned 15 locations.

Earlier this year Wanda’s chairman Wang Jianlin taunted Walt Disney’s Shanghai Disney Resort, suggesting that it was too highly priced and that it would be overtaken by his ‘wolf pack’ of parks. Shortly after, Wanda’s parks initiatives took a dent when it temporarily closed its indoor theme park in Wuhan after less than two years of operation.

Diversification away from hard core property development is a major theme for the group that has expanded into entertainment and leisure through its own developments as well as through acquisitions including Legendary Entertainment and European cinema chain Odeon / UCI.

On Thursday Wanda chairman Wang Jianlin was the final, keynote speaker at a high powered retail convention in Beijing. As well as giving a second wind to Wanda’s own e-commerce platform Ffan.com, Wang urged the industry and the Chinese government to help encourage Chinese consumers to do more of their shopping at home.

[GeneChing]

Good luck with this, Mr. Wang. Mickey is stronger than you think. :rolleyes:


China’s richest man, Wanda Group CEO Wang Jianlin, has declared war on Disneyland (http://qz.com/768740/chinas-richest-man-wanda-group-ceo-wang-jianlin-has-declared-war-on-disneyland/)

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/wang-jian-lin-wanda-chairman-e1472457321750.jpg?w=3200
Building his kingdom. (Reuters/Jason Lee)

WRITTEN BY
Echo Huang Yinyin
OBSESSION

China's Transition
4 hours ago

China’s richest man, Wang Jianlin, wants to make sure the Magic Kingdom doesn’t make any money in China.
In an interview with Chinese talk show host Chen Luyu that aired on Aug. 26, the billionaire behind real estate giant Dalian Wanda Group showed off his Beijing headquarters, and shared a vision of destroying his best-known competition by outbuilding them.
Wang said he hoped to make the mainland’s first Disneyland, which opened in Shanghai on June 16, “unprofitable in the coming two decades.” Wang, the world’s biggest commercial real estate developer, opened a rival amusement park complex that cost 22 billion yuan ($3.3 billion) (link in Chinese) in third-tier city Nanchang days after Disneyland’s China debut.
Wang said Wanda plans to build 15 similar amusement park complexes in China and three to five abroad before 2020. His newest, in Hefei, northern China, cost over 35 billion yuan (link in Chinese) and will be welcoming guests from Sept. 24. Wang compared his strategy to playing mahjong, saying, “If Disney wants to win a hand, we will intercept it by building amusement parks.”
Wanda’s theme park and Disney’s have already clashed: After characters that looked like Snow White and Captain America were spotted at the Wanda park, Disney said it would “take action” to protect its own intellectual property.
Wang’s ultimate goal, he said during the recent interview, is to “change the world where rules are set by foreigners.” In other words, Chinese should make the final calls.
He also criticized Chinese people who go to Disneyland, using an idiom that means “to be crazy about foreign things and obsequious to foreigners,” adding that “the once-glorified Disneyland is part of the past.”
Wang embarked on a frantic acquisition spree four years ago and has not slowed down since. He is now worth $30 billion, after spending $2.6 billion for the world’s second-biggest theater group AMC in 2012, $52 million for a 20% stake in Spanish soccer team Atletico Madrid in January 2015, and $3.5 billion for Hollywood film studio Legendary Entertainment a year later, among other deals.
Some of China’s netizens said they found Wang’s comments xenophobic (link in Chinese, registration required). “I am sorry, but what is Wanda?” wrote one. “People will spend money going to Disney in China no matter how expensive it is because it has a brand value… How can you just use a financial statement to downplay Disney’s cultural influence?”
The first part of the interview is available on YouTube, but there are no subtitles in English:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq4JZvEdlpY

[GeneChing]

Eager to see some images from this.


Sat Sep 24, 2016 | 6:23am EDT
China's Dalian Wanda opens $5.1 billion tourism park (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dalianwanda-park-idUSKCN11U0AH)

http://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20160924&t=2&i=1154793642&w=780&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=LYNXNPEC8N076
Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Wanda Group, poses for pictures after an interview in Beijing, China, August 23, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

By Alexandra Harney | SHANGHAI
Dalian Wanda Group, the Chinese entertainment giant owned by the country's richest man, opened the first phase of a sprawling 34 billion yuan ($5.1 billion) tourism park in the eastern city of Hefei on Saturday.

Wanda is building similar projects around the country, betting that China's rising incomes will drive more domestic tourism. In an interview with Reuters last month, chairman Wang Jianlin said that Wanda would look to build at least 20 such complexes in China.

The 160 hectare (1.6 square km) first phase of Hefei Wanda City includes a theme park, hotels and a shopping mall. The second phase will be an "indoor recreation project," according to a statement from the company. Wanda intends to extend the park into a third phase, which is still in the planning stages, it said.

Wang has been open about his rivalry with Walt Disney Co, which opened a $5.5 billion resort in Shanghai in June. "At Wanda, I always say we want to ensure Disney is not profitable for 10-20 years in this business segment in China," he told state-run China Central Television (CCTV) in a May interview.

China's slowing economy has taken a toll on some areas of consumer spending. Outbound tourism numbers - which rose 16 percent in 2015 - are set to flatline this year, according to China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) data. At Wanda Cinema Line Corp, Wanda's theater arm, box office sales rose 12.8 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared to a 61.4 percent jump in the first quarter.

Wanda has been investing heavily as it seeks to triple revenues from its cultural division - which includes entertainment, sports and tourism - to 150 billion yuan ($22.5 billion) by 2020.

On Friday, Wanda announced a partnership with Sony Pictures under which Wanda will market Sony Pictures' films and co-finance some upcoming movie releases of Sony Corp's film unit in China.

In January, Wanda paid $3.5 billion for a controlling stake in U.S. film studio Legendary Entertainment. It has also acquired Swiss sports marketing firm Infront Sports & Media AG and World Triathlon Corp, owner of the "Ironman" franchise.

Hefei Wanda City will host China's first Ironman triathlon, according to the statement. The race is scheduled for October 16, according to Ironman's website.

(Reporting By Alexandra Harney; Editing by Sam Holmes)

[GeneChing]

China’s influence over Hollywood grows (https://www.abqjournal.com/852954/chinas-influence-over-hollywood-grows.html)
By Ana Swanson / The Washington Post
Monday, September 26th, 2016 at 8:25am

China has never been shy about its desire to acquire “soft power” – the kind of cultural and economic influence that can’t be wielded by military might. And Hollywood has often been a partner in its project.
China’s bid for soft power was on show last week, as Sony Pictures Entertainment formed an alliance with Dalian Wanda, a Chinese company that has become one of the world’s largest media empires, in a deal announced Friday. While the partnership was smaller than some of Dalian Wanda’s previous acquisitions, it attracted attention as the Chinese company’s third major deal in Hollywood this year.

These deals have sparked concern over whether China’s expanding influence in Hollywood could lead to more pro-Chinese propaganda in U.S. films. The Chinese government tightly controls media content, and Hollywood studios have been known to alter films to feature China or the Chinese government in a more flattering light to gain access to the country’s lucrative film market.

For Hollywood, China provides the blockbuster combination of a huge movie market and cash-rich equity funds that are eager to invest in films and companies. The Chinese box office is on pace to soon surpass the U.S. as the world’s biggest market, perhaps next year.

On Sept. 15, 16 members of Congress mentioned the Chinese company by name in a letter that called for greater scrutiny of foreign investments. The 14 Republicans and two Democrats said that Dalian Wanda’s acquisitions have raised concerns “about China’s efforts to censor topics and exert propaganda controls on American media.”

The partnership — in which the Chinese company will help promote Sony films in China and co-finance some of Sony’s biggest China movie releases — comes on the heels of two major acquisitions. In January, Dalian Wanda announced the acquisition of Legendary Entertainment, the Hollywood production company behind such blockbusters as “Jurassic World” and “The Dark Knight.” In March, AMC Entertainment, a U.S. cinema chain previously acquired by Dalian Wanda, made a bid for Carmike Cinemas that would make Dalian Wanda Group the owner of the biggest cinema chain in the United States.

The Chinese company is expanding elsewhere, acquiring cinema chains in Australia and Europe in steps toward its goal of controlling 20 percent of the global film market by 2020. It is also heavily investing in China’s domestic industry, including a 400-acre film studio slated to open in 2017 that will have 30 soundstages, an underwater stage, and a permanent set of a New York City street.

In announcing the Sony Pictures deal, the Chinese company vowed to increase China’s influence. In a statement, Dalian Wanda said it would “strive to highlight the China element in the films in which it invests.” “The alliance will help strengthen Wanda’s power to influence the global film industry, and set a good precedent for Chinese film producers in their international investment,” the company said.

The owner and founder of Dalian Wanda, Wang Jianlin, has been plain about his desire to expand China’s global media influence. Wang, who is China’s richest man, said in a Chinese television interview in August that he would like to “change the world where rules are set by foreigners.”

As the owner of a nascent theme park chain, Wang also sparred with Disney, which opened its first park in mainland China in June. “They shouldn’t have entered China. We have a [saying]: one tiger is no match for a pack of wolves. Shanghai has one Disney, while Wanda, across the nation, will open 15 to 20,” Wang said, according to Fortune. “Disneyland is fully built on American culture. We place importance on local culture.”

Wang’s statements about expanding soft power are likely an appeal to the Chinese government, which has crafted an explicit policy to export Chinese cultural content and increase the country’s soft power. On Jan, 1, 2014, China’s president, Xi Jinping, published an article in the state newspaper People’s Daily saying the country needed to promote its soft power and build its image abroad.

“From a political standpoint, this is very much in line with Chinese media policy, and Wang Jianlin is closely aligned with these policymakers,” says Aynne Kokas, an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of the forthcoming book “Hollywood Made in China.” So it’s a short leap to think Wang means to use his corporate power to expand China’s influence abroad, she says. “I think we should believe Wang Jianlin when he tells us what he plans to do.”

Tensions are further complicated because, while the United States freely permits Chinese investment in its film sector, China tightly controls U.S. investment in films in China. In addition, an agreement between the United States and China that permits American companies to export a total of 34 films to China per year is set to expire in February. The need for U.S. investment in the Chinese film industry has declined in recent years, sparking speculation that China could further restrict the number of American films it allows into its market.

Ironically, Sony sparked similar fears of foreign incursion in the U.S. market 27 years ago, when the Japanese company purchased Columbia Pictures Entertainment for $3.4 billion in cash. It was the largest acquisition to date by a Japanese firm. At the time, Sony pledged to keep the movie and TV studio “as independent as possible, as a full-fledged member of the U.S. film industry.”

Wanda’s U.S. operations also came under scrutiny Thursday, the day before the Sony Pictures partnership was announced, for allegedly using foreign money to challenge a local ballot measure in Beverly Hills that would decide a conflict between Wanda and the Beverly Hilton over plans to develop a local parcel of land. A local labor union representing hotel workers filed a complaint Thursday that Wanda had used foreign money to influence the ballot measures, in contravention of U.S. law. Wanda denied the allegation.

This thread would be remiss without a mention of the 'nation's husband'. (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69088-Chinese-Tycoons-CEOs-amp-Tuhao&p=1296389#post1296389) ;)

[GeneChing]

Holy cats! Wang will be the global media king.

There's a short vid if you follow the link.


China's Wanda Group in talks to buy **** Clark Productions (http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/26/media/wanda-****-clark-productions/index.html)
by Sandra Gonzalez @CNNMoney
September 26, 2016: 8:29 PM ET

Wang Jianlin in 84 Seconds
China's richest man is making a move to buy yet another well known American entertainment property.
Billionaire Wang Jianlin's Dalian Wanda Group is in talks to buy **** Clark Productions, a spokesperson for DCP's parent company, Eldridge Industries, tells CNN.
"**** Clark Productions and Beijing Wanda Culture Industry Group Co., Ltd., have agreed to enter into exclusive talks with the shared goal of finalizing a mutually satisfactory transaction," Eldridge said a statement. "DCP is controlled by Eldridge Industries which announced last month that it was conducting a strategic review of its media holdings."
**** Clark Productions produces the American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards and Golden Globe awards, among others.
The company, launched by late legendary broadcaster **** Clark in 1957, is reportedly valued at $1 billion.
The deal would mark Wanda's latest in a string of deals that seek to expand the company's American entertainment footprint.
Wanda Group kicked off 2016 by paying $3.5 billion to buy Legendary Entertainment, the studio behind "Jurassic World" and "Interstellar."
Just last week, the conglomerate entered into a "mutually beneficial deal" with Sony Pictures that will among other things see Wanda wield new influence over certain big-budget films produced by the studio in an effort to maximize the appeal to Chinese moviegoers.
Wanda said it plans to seek similar deals with other content companies.
Wanda has owned cinema chain AMC since 2012.

CNNMoney (Los Angeles)
First published September 26, 2016: 8:29 PM ET

[GeneChing]

Chinese Purchases of U.S. Companies Have Some in Congress Raising Eyebrows (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/world/asia/china-us-foreign-acquisition-dalian-wanda.html?_r=0)
Sinosphere
By EDWARD WONG SEPT. 30, 2016

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/10/01/world/01chinacongress-web1/01chinacongress-web1-master768.jpg
Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Wanda Group, hopes to buy at least a 50 percent stake in one of the “Big Six” Hollywood studios. Credit Thomas Peter/Reuters

PRINCETON, N.J. — Movie theaters and studios are rarely the focus of geopolitical conflict.

But 16 members of Congress are raising this question: Should foreign acquisition of these kinds of American companies be subject to special scrutiny?

In a recent letter, those politicians cited the case of the Dalian Wanda Group, the Chinese conglomerate that in January bought Legendary Entertainment, one of Hollywood’s biggest production companies, for as much as $3.5 billion. In 2012, Wanda bought AMC Theaters, the large American chain, for $2.6 billion.

“Should the definition of national security be broadened to address concerns about propaganda and control of the media and ‘soft power’ institutions?” the representatives said in the letter, which was dated Sept. 15 and addressed to Gene L. Dodaro, comptroller general.

Mr. Dodaro is the head of the Government Accountability Office, and the aim of the letter was to urge that office to consider whether the government process to review foreign investment in the United States needs to be expanded. The process is overseen by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, an interagency group that is supervised by the Treasury Department.

“As we prepare for the upcoming presidential transition, now is an opportune time for G.A.O. to review what has worked well, and where Cfius authorities may need to be expanded, especially given the rise in state-controlled enterprises from China and Russia, among other designated countries,” the letter said.

Wanda is not a state-controlled enterprise, but the writers said that any Chinese company designated a “state champion” that benefits from “illegal subsidies” could pose a strategic, if not overt, national security threat. They said there have been “growing concerns about China’s efforts to censor topics and exert propaganda controls on American media.”

The letter also pointed to the $43 billion purchase of Syngenta, a Swiss company specializing in seeds and farm chemicals, by the state-owned China National Chemical Corporation as another transaction that had raised “concern” in Congress. That deal was approved by the committee in August.

In a list of nine questions at the end of the letter, the signers also asked whether the committee sufficiently reviews Chinese angel or venture capital funds being established in the United States, as well as Chinese investment in technology accelerators and regulators.

In February, Steven Davidoff Solomon, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in The New York Times that some bids for foreign businesses by Chinese companies were canceled after scrutiny by the committee. While it approves most transactions, he wrote, we should “expect tensions to get worse” since Chinese companies are increasingly investing in foreign companies as a way of moving money out of China.

“We are entering into a new phase with Chinese acquisitions,” Mr. Solomon wrote. “The United States’ national security service, never considered a transparent process, is going to have to grapple with how far it can allow these Chinese companies to go.”

Among the signers of the Sept. 15 letter are some well-known critics of the Chinese Communist Party.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, introduced a bill in 2012 that called for the government to withhold visas for Chinese journalists if Beijing continued its policy of not issuing such documents to American journalists or news organizations that it deemed to be troublemakers. Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, speaks out regularly against human rights abuses in China.

“Beijing is increasingly confident that its version of state authoritarianism can be exported, though the Communist Party’s efforts at ‘soft power’ outreach have little credibility or impact at this point,” Mr. Smith said in a written statement to The Times on Wednesday.

“But the buying spree by Dalian Wanda Group and other Chinese investments in Hollywood, media and entertainment should raise questions that restrictions on creative freedom or media self-censorship will follow, particularly when Dalian Wanda’s C.E.O. is very clear that his goal is to subvert American pop culture’s influence and change the world where rules are set by foreigners,” he said.

“Would any movies favorably portraying the Dalai Lama, Liu Xiaobo or Chen Guangcheng be greenlighted if they risked the loss of Chinese investment — I don’t think so,” he added, referring to three people deemed prominent political adversaries by the Communist Party.

Wanda declined to comment on Friday.

On Wednesday, Wang Jianlin, Wanda’s chairman and founder, told CNN that he thought the American lawmakers were “over-worried.” He also said he would continue to invest in companies in the United States and was interested in buying at least a 50 percent stake in one of the “Big Six” Hollywood studios.

In a speech at Harvard Business School in October 2015, Mr. Wang, designated by Forbes as China’s richest man, emphasized that he ran a “privately owned corporation” whose “first objective is to make money.”

An investigative article published by The Times in April 2015 showed that relatives of top Communist Party officials and their business associates were early investors in Wanda and held significant stakes in the company.

At the Harvard speech, Mr. Wang, in reply to a question about that article, acknowledged that Qi Qiaoqiao, the sister of Xi Jinping, China’s president and the leader of the Communist Party, and Deng Jiagui, her husband, had held shares in Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties but sold them before an initial public offering. Mr. Wang said that meant the couple had missed out on making a “fortune” from capital gains.

Follow Edward Wong on Twitter @comradewong.

A version of this article appears in print on October 3, 2016, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Chinese Deals for U.S. Media Have Some in Congress Raising Eyebrows

Chicoms buying out U.S. capitalists? :confused:

[GeneChing]

...Wang Jianlin don't care. :cool:


Wanda’s Wang Jianlin Announces Hollywood Visit (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wanda-s-wang-jianlin-announces-934567)
1:13 AM PDT 10/3/2016 by THR Staff

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2016/06/wang_jianlin.jpg
Getty Images

China’s richest man will address a who’s who of industry heavyweights at LACMA on Oct. 17.

Wang Jianlin, chairman of China’s Dalian Wanda Group, has revealed details about his highly anticipated visit to Hollywood.

In an event that is expected to bring out a who’s who of L.A. A-listers ranging from studio heads, celebs and local politicians, China’s richest man is expected to discuss his massive Qingdao Movie Metropolis, currently under construction in eastern China, at LACMA’s Bing Theater on Oct. 17.

Billed as a US-Sino Business Evening focusing on “navigating business in China,” the event will reportedly include talks by L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and AMPAS president Cheryl Boone Isaacs.

A rendering of Wanda's 15-story One Beverly Hills complex, a mix of hotel and residential units.

The event, which will be followed by a ****tail reception and VIP dinner, comes at a particularly heady time for Wang, whose Wanda Group continues to make aggressive moves into Hollywood. In just the last week, Wanda, China’s largest theater operator, announced a strategic marketing and co-financing deal with Sony that will see the Beijing-based company promote the studio’s titles in the Middle Kingdom. That deal was followed by news that the company is holding preliminary talks to purchase **** Clark Productions, the company behind the Golden Globe Awards, American Music Awards and Billboard Music. The price tag for that deal is reportedly in the $1 billion range.

The deals continue a flurry of activity this year that confirm Wang’s ambition to invest in Hollywood entities in an attempt to “bring their technology and capability to China," as he told Reuters in August. Earlier this year, Wanda paid a reported $3.5 billion to acquire Legendary Entertainment, Thomas Tull's studio behind Pacific Rim, Warcraft and the upcoming The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon.

Wanda, which began as a real estate development company in China, already owns the AMC Entertainment theater chain in the U.S. and other chains around the world.

[GeneChing]

And once again, fear of the "Yellow Peril" rises. :o


Washington Post Warns That China’s Hollywood Invasion Is a ‘Propaganda’ Play (http://www.thewrap.com/washington-post-warns-that-chinas-hollywood-invasion-is-a-propaganda-play/)
Dalian Wanda Group has bought Legendary Pictures, set a strategic alliance with Sony Pictures and is in talks to buy **** Clark Productions
Beatrice Verhoeven | October 6, 2016 @ 9:10 AM

http://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dalian-wanda.jpg
Dalian Wanda

In the wake of a Hollywood spending spree by China’s Dalian Wanda Group, the Washington Post has published a deeply cautionary editorial, warning that “Beijing’s next propaganda outlet” could be the entertainment industry.

The Chinese firm has purchased Legendary Entertainment and has a pending deal to buy **** Clark Productions, which produces the Golden Globes and American Music Awards, and the paper sees this as “a matter of national strategic importance.”

“China already has imposed its censorious values on Hollywood studios, using access to its lucrative but strictly limited market (where Dalian Wanda also controls many theaters) as leverage,” the editorial says, adding that Wanda enjoys substantially greater freedom to conduct business in the U.S. than foreign firms are granted in China.

“Not only does Beijing seek to impose its censor’s rules on American films, but it also refuses foreign investors the same access to Chinese media and entertainment industries that Dalian Wanda enjoys in the United States. It is not far-fetched to assume that China would seek to spread pro-regime propaganda via ownership of U.S. entertainment media.”

Wanda, which bought Legendary for $3.5 billion and plans to target one of the “Big Six” Hollywood studios next, is in talks to buy **** Clark Productions at a $1 billion valuation.

“Is its ownership also a matter of national strategic importance?” asked the article. “The answer, according to a growing number of U.S. officials and entertainment industry observers, is maybe. That’s because the would-be buyer is Dalian Wanda, a Chinese conglomerate whose chairman’s Communist Party membership and close ties to President Xi Jinping’s government in Beijing make it a private firm only in a nominal sense.”

The editorial added, “If fully executed, this acquisition strategy could give Dalian Wanda, and by extension its patrons in Beijing, influence over not only the distribution of films but also their content.”

The paper recalls when Japan spent billions of dollars to take over Columbia Pictures and Universal but were forced to retreat because they underwent financial losses. However, it said, there is a “fundamental difference” between China and Japan’s spending habits.

“Japan is a strategic ally of the United States and a democracy committed to free expression,” it said. “China, by contrast, is adversarial and ruled by a dictator, Mr. Xi, who has openly declared a global propaganda agenda, based on the idea that ‘Chinese art will further develop only when we make foreign things serve China.’“

The 28-year-old Wanda Group is on pace to spend more than $30 billion in deals this year, with almost half of that in sports and entertainment. The company that began as a residential real estate development firm in the northern port city of Dalian, China, has grown at a record pace. Two months ago, it announced plans to install 4,000 new RealD 3D screens and 150 new IMAX theaters — the largest-ever installation deals for each of those formats.

Its latest move was to set a strategic alliance with Sony Pictures Entertainment. Wanda will invest in key film franchises that will be announced within the coming weeks, one individual familiar with the deal said. In return, SPE will take advantage of the considerable marketing and release power that the investment group enjoys in China.

And congress seems to be concerned by all of the activity. Earlier this week, the Government Accountability Office accepted a request from members of congress to review the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and determine whether its legal powers have kept pace with the influx of international buyers targeting American companies — particularly the fire hose of Chinese investment in Hollywood.

[GeneChing]

We Americans are too wrapped up in our own propaganda to be seduced by Chicom movie propaganda. :o


https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iKbTW5AsBTZ0/v0/1200x-1.jpg
PAPER TIGER.
PHOTOGRAPHER: LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES


China's Invading Hollywood! Now, Relax (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-07/china-s-invading-hollywood-now-relax)
17 OCT 7, 2016 11:35 AM EDT
By Adam Minter

Wang Jianlin, China's richest man, has been on a Hollywood shopping spree. As chief executive of the Wanda Group, he's acquired Legendary Entertainment, producer of "Jurassic Park," and is in talks to pay $1 billion for **** Clark Productions, producer of the Golden Globes and other live television events. An earlier purchase, AMC Entertainment, recently announced plans to buy Carmike Cinema, which would create the world's biggest theater chain.

When Wang arrives in Hollywood for a highly anticipated visit later this month, he'll have even bigger game in sight: one of the Big Six Hollywood studios that control as much as 85 percent of U.S. and Canadian box office revenue. If successful, he'll be the first Chinese national to own one.

That's aroused worries that Wang and other aspiring Chinese movie moguls may restrict creative freedoms and spread Chinese propaganda in the U.S. and beyond. Last month, 16 members of Congress wrote to the Government Accountability Office asking it to reconsider how foreign investments in the U.S. are reviewed. Since then, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has added his signature to the letter. Wanda's entertainment acquisitions were on the list of worries: "Should the definition of national security be broadened to address concerns about propaganda and control of the media and ‘soft power’ institutions?" the group asked.

At home, it's true, China operates one of the world's most formidable propaganda and censorship programs, and tycoons like Wang have succeeded in part because of their willingness to play by its rules. China's Communist Party has long embraced the idea that the role of art is to advance its interests. In October 2014, President Xi Jinping made that commitment explicit in a speech in which he called on Chinese painters, writers and filmmakers to "fully implement the Party's art policy."

Every Chinese artist knows what red lines shouldn't be crossed; the idea of Tibetan or Taiwanese independence is off-limits, for instance, as are topics that call into question the canonical history of the Communist Party. More recently, the government has added a few specific bans, including one barring television programming that promotes "Western lifestyles."

The idea that Wang might be able to export Communist dogma to Hollywood, however, seems fanciful. The most successful Chinese movies tend to be harmless melodramas and martial arts films. So far, this year's biggest box office success is a comedy about a mermaid assassin who falls in love with the greedy real estate developer she was sent to kill. On those rare occasions when Chinese filmmakers dabble in propaganda, the films have invariably failed (unless propped up by box office fraud).

Indeed, even on their home turf, Chinese films are no competition for Hollywood, which accounted for nearly 40 percent of China's box office receipts in 2015 despite rampant piracy and strict limits on the number of foreign films. Wang has openly acknowledged that part of his goal is to obtain U.S. technology and know-how in order to improve Chinese filmmaking. He has little incentive to transform a U.S. studio into a facsimile of its Chinese peers.

A bigger concern is self-censorship. In recent years, Hollywood studios have become adept at making -- or at least, editing -- films that can get past China's censors. Some have gone further and rewritten storylines that might raise hackles in Beijing, as when MGM decided to change Chinese villains into North Korean ones in a clumsy 2011 remake of "Red Dawn." A Chinese-owned studio would no doubt be at least as conscientious about the Party's sensitivities, if not more so.

Fortunately, the impact would probably be limited. Since the 1940s, Hollywood's studio system has given way to a blossoming of independent production companies, distribution channels and exhibition formats that give an independent-minded filmmaker many options. A Wang-owned studio could still pass on controversial projects, of course. But shareholders and audiences would look askance if management repeatedly missed out on successful films, and at least some filmmakers and talents would look elsewhere if Wanda developed a reputation for asserting a political agenda. Meanwhile, the proliferation of production houses -- not just indies, but major companies such as Amazon and Netflix -- means that U.S. viewers aren't likely to be starved for choice.

In theory, Wanda could use its power as the owner of AMC to ensure that large numbers of U.S. cinemas are stocked only with politically acceptable films. But the Justice Department's antitrust lawyers have required AMC to sell off theaters for competition reasons in the past, and the proposed Carmike acquisition - currently under investigation - may inspire them to do so again.

Meanwhile, under a landmark Supreme Court antitrust ruling in 1948, Hollywood studios were required to divest themselves of their theater-chain holdings and stop forcing independent theaters to book their films. Even if Wanda acquires a major studio, that decision - and a zealous Justice Department - ensures that it won't be able to force propaganda down the throats of American audiences that are probably home watching American-owned Netflix, anyway.

Americans have plenty of reasons to be wary of China's expanding influence. But at a time of expanding entertainment options, fear that China might be taking over the local multiplex is overheated and outdated. Taste, technology and ambition will ensure that there is always something else to watch.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Adam Minter at aminter@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net

[GeneChing]

Why DC Started Caring About Dalian Wanda Group and China in Hollywood (http://www.thewrap.com/why-dc-started-caring-about-dalian-wanda-group-and-china-in-hollywood/)
Aggressive posturing from China’s richest man — and Washington lobbying — is fueling a reaction
Matt Pressberg | October 10, 2016 @ 5:32 PM

http://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/wangjianlin.jpg
Getty Images

China’s Dalian Wanda Group made its first big splash in Hollywood back in 2012, when it acquired AMC Theaters. Since then, the real estate and media conglomerate has been on quite a shopping spree, including buying “Jurassic World” production company Legendary Entertainment for an aggressive $3.5 billion in January — which made Wanda the first Chinese company to own an American studio or production house.

But it was only the past few days when D.C. really took notice — and began pushing back.

The Washington Post published a strongly worded Oct. 5 editorial that raised red flags over the possibility of China’s ruling party using its entertainment assets to spread propaganda.

Also last week, the Government Accountability Office agreed to a request from 16 members of Congress to review the legal powers of a foreign investment committee, and Rep. Jim Culberson sent a letter to the Department of Justice urging it to take another look at the Foreign Agents Registration Act, specifically mentioning Wanda’s entertainment purchases and their potential to be used for “propaganda purposes.”

So why did Washington decide to start paying attention now?

For one, Wanda — and other Chinese firms — are stepping up their investments in Hollywood. Co-financing deals between U.S. studios and Chinese partners have been booming for a couple years now, including arrangements such as Lionsgate’s deal with Hunan TV, STX’s with Huayi Bros. and Universal’s with Perfect World Pictures.

This year, in addition to purchasing Legendary, Wanda was also a leading contender to buy a minority stake in Paramount Pictures — before that was taken off the table — and is also in talks to acquire **** Clark Productions for $1 billion.

Wanda isn’t a typical entertainment company, either. Its founder and CEO, Wang Jianlin, is China’s richest man and close to the ruling party. Several individuals with ties to government officials have significant economic interests in Wanda’s businesses. Wang has made no secret of his desire to spread “Chinese values” around the world via entertainment, making that point — and criticizing U.S. rivals like Disney — in a blustery fashion that can rub people the wrong way.

But as members of Congress have plenty of issues to occupy their minds and public pronouncements aside from Chinese investments in entertainment companies, one instrumental factor in the recent string of fusillades from Capitol Hill has been a campaign by Richard Berman, the president of D.C. lobbying firm Berman & Co.

Berman started paying attention to the fire hose of Chinese money flowing into Hollywood this summer and had one of his staffers do more research, realizing it was bigger than he thought. He then began reaching out to sympathetic legislators.

“We reached out to some people on the Hill that we knew already had an agenda,” Berman told TheWrap. “There are people who are predisposed to being suspicious [of China] because of some other issues. And a lot of those people have committee assignments that overlap [with Chinese investment in Hollywood].”

Berman said last week’s events were the culmination of that work, and that someone on his staff had been in touch with Culberson.

“My fingerprints are all over this,” he said.

Berman acknowledged that studios tailoring their product to appease the China’s gatekeepers — don’t expect to see a Chinese villain in the next James Bond film — is primarily a business decision driven by the desire to get into the world’s second-biggest and one of its fastest growing movie markets, but he’s more focused on China’s ownership of distribution outlets.

“The issue of censorship in China is not my concern,” he said. “People changing their movies so they can be shown in China is not my concern. The thing that really triggered my interest is the distribution issue. If you control distribution, you control what the retail market sees.”

To that end, Berman pointed out Wanda’s ownership of AMC Theaters, which is currently in talks to acquire Carmike Cinemas — making it America’s biggest theatrical exhibitor. He said he had conversations with AMC personnel that didn’t give him great comfort that the theater chain would be free to show movies that the Chinese government didn’t like.

“Wang has been pretty blatant that AMC is owned by the Chinese,” he said.

Berman said he’s doing this “just to make people aware,” adding that he’s satisfied with last week’s Washington Post editorial and the correspondence between members of Congress and the GAO and DOJ.

“I’m not trying to make this a McCarthy-ite type issue; but as far as I’m concerned, it needed to have more light shown on it,” he said.

We've been tracking this since Good to know DC has caught up. :rolleyes:

[GeneChing]

Why DC Started Caring About Dalian Wanda Group and China in Hollywood (http://www.thewrap.com/why-dc-started-caring-about-dalian-wanda-group-and-china-in-hollywood/)
Aggressive posturing from China’s richest man — and Washington lobbying — is fueling a reaction
Matt Pressberg | October 10, 2016 @ 5:32 PM

http://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/wangjianlin.jpg
Getty Images

China’s Dalian Wanda Group made its first big splash in Hollywood back in 2012, when it acquired AMC Theaters. Since then, the real estate and media conglomerate has been on quite a shopping spree, including buying “Jurassic World” production company Legendary Entertainment for an aggressive $3.5 billion in January — which made Wanda the first Chinese company to own an American studio or production house.

But it was only the past few days when D.C. really took notice — and began pushing back.

The Washington Post published a strongly worded Oct. 5 editorial that raised red flags over the possibility of China’s ruling party using its entertainment assets to spread propaganda.

Also last week, the Government Accountability Office agreed to a request from 16 members of Congress to review the legal powers of a foreign investment committee, and Rep. Jim Culberson sent a letter to the Department of Justice urging it to take another look at the Foreign Agents Registration Act, specifically mentioning Wanda’s entertainment purchases and their potential to be used for “propaganda purposes.”

So why did Washington decide to start paying attention now?

For one, Wanda — and other Chinese firms — are stepping up their investments in Hollywood. Co-financing deals between U.S. studios and Chinese partners have been booming for a couple years now, including arrangements such as Lionsgate’s deal with Hunan TV, STX’s with Huayi Bros. and Universal’s with Perfect World Pictures.

This year, in addition to purchasing Legendary, Wanda was also a leading contender to buy a minority stake in Paramount Pictures — before that was taken off the table — and is also in talks to acquire **** Clark Productions for $1 billion.

Wanda isn’t a typical entertainment company, either. Its founder and CEO, Wang Jianlin, is China’s richest man and close to the ruling party. Several individuals with ties to government officials have significant economic interests in Wanda’s businesses. Wang has made no secret of his desire to spread “Chinese values” around the world via entertainment, making that point — and criticizing U.S. rivals like Disney — in a blustery fashion that can rub people the wrong way.

But as members of Congress have plenty of issues to occupy their minds and public pronouncements aside from Chinese investments in entertainment companies, one instrumental factor in the recent string of fusillades from Capitol Hill has been a campaign by Richard Berman, the president of D.C. lobbying firm Berman & Co.

Berman started paying attention to the fire hose of Chinese money flowing into Hollywood this summer and had one of his staffers do more research, realizing it was bigger than he thought. He then began reaching out to sympathetic legislators.

“We reached out to some people on the Hill that we knew already had an agenda,” Berman told TheWrap. “There are people who are predisposed to being suspicious [of China] because of some other issues. And a lot of those people have committee assignments that overlap [with Chinese investment in Hollywood].”

Berman said last week’s events were the culmination of that work, and that someone on his staff had been in touch with Culberson.

“My fingerprints are all over this,” he said.

Berman acknowledged that studios tailoring their product to appease the China’s gatekeepers — don’t expect to see a Chinese villain in the next James Bond film — is primarily a business decision driven by the desire to get into the world’s second-biggest and one of its fastest growing movie markets, but he’s more focused on China’s ownership of distribution outlets.

“The issue of censorship in China is not my concern,” he said. “People changing their movies so they can be shown in China is not my concern. The thing that really triggered my interest is the distribution issue. If you control distribution, you control what the retail market sees.”

To that end, Berman pointed out Wanda’s ownership of AMC Theaters, which is currently in talks to acquire Carmike Cinemas — making it America’s biggest theatrical exhibitor. He said he had conversations with AMC personnel that didn’t give him great comfort that the theater chain would be free to show movies that the Chinese government didn’t like.

“Wang has been pretty blatant that AMC is owned by the Chinese,” he said.

Berman said he’s doing this “just to make people aware,” adding that he’s satisfied with last week’s Washington Post editorial and the correspondence between members of Congress and the GAO and DOJ.

“I’m not trying to make this a McCarthy-ite type issue; but as far as I’m concerned, it needed to have more light shown on it,” he said.

We've been tracking this since 2010. Good to know DC has caught up. :rolleyes:

[GeneChing]

BUSINESS NEWS | Thu Oct 13, 2016 | 2:21am EDT
Wanda's Wang defends top spot in China rich list (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rich-list-idUSKCN12D07L)

http://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20161013&t=2&i=1157242083&w=&fh=&fw=&ll=780&pl=468&sq=&r=LYNXNPEC9C04J
Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Wanda Group, speaks during an interview in Beijing, China, August 23, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo

By Jackie Cai and Adam Jourdan | SHANGHAI

Chinese property magnate Wang Jianlin has defended his crown as the country's richest man, according to the annual Hurun rich list, fending off Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N) founder Jack Ma and new players on the block like Baoneng's Yao Zhenhua.

Wang, the chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, took the top spot with a personal fortune of $32.1 billion, the report said, despite Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, seeing his wealth surge 41 percent from 2015.

The annual rich list of China's movers and shakers gives a temperature check on where money is flowing in China, and underlines the growing financial muscle of the country's super-rich - a trend that has been fuelling a boom in global deals.

Yao Zhenhua, the chairman of Baoneng Group and the biggest riser since 2015, saw his wealth shoot up 820 percent to $17.2 billion, elevating him to fourth in the overall list. Yao has been at the center of a hostile takeover battle for China's largest real estate developer China Vanke Co Ltd (000002.SZ).

Hurun founder Rupert Hoogewerf said Yao represented a new wave of wealthy Chinese, those whose money came from playing the financial markets as opposed to more traditional routes like trade or manufacturing.

"There's a new type of wealth creation coming out," he told Reuters, adding China was having to adapt as the wider economy was "very materially slowing down".

"Today it is about using the capital markets for financial investment," he said.

Baoneng, a financial conglomerate that had been a relative unknown, rose to prominence over the last year by becoming the largest shareholder in Vanke, though drew criticism from Vanke's own chairman over where it was getting its funds.

The report said there were now 594 dollar billionaires in China, putting China ahead of the United States' 535. However, none of China's super-rich make it into the global top 20.

Other risers included online gaming tycoon Ding Lei of Netease, appliance maker Midea Group's (000333.SZ) He Xiangjian and property magnate Xu Jiayin of Evergrande (3333.HK). However, smartphone maker Xiaomi [XTC.UL] saw founder Lei Jun fall out of the top 10 as competition in China's smartphone market rose.

(Reporting by Jackie Cai and Adam Jourdan; Editing by Stephen Coates)

We see what they want us to see, but I can't but wonder how this plays out in Communist China.

[GeneChing]

HEY MICKEY
China’s Wanda Group has hired the ex-head of Hong Kong Disneyland to help it crush Disney (http://qz.com/810769/chinas-wanda-group-has-hired-the-ex-head-of-hong-kong-disneyland-to-help-it-crush-disney/)
Hong Kong Disneyland Managing Director Andrew Kam (C) attends a news conference in Hong Kong February 18, 2013. Hong Kong Disneyland on Monday reported a net profit of HK$109 million (13.97 million) for the financial year that ended on September 29, 2012, the first annual profit since the resort opened in September 2005.

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/rtr3dy05-e1476674055106.jpg?w=3200
Andrew Kam, now making magic at Wanda. (Reuters/Bobby Yip)

WRITTEN BY Zheping Huang
OBSESSION China's Transition
October 17, 2016

One of China’s richest men, Wang Jianlin—who presides over an entertainment empire that includes cinemas in the US and theme parks—recently threw down the gauntlet and declared war on Disneyland. To do that, he’s hired the former boss of Hong Kong Disneyland to run its theme park business.
Andrew Kam, former managing director of Hong Kong Disneyland, will join Wang’s conglomerate Wanda Group, state-run digital publication the Paper reported (link in Chinese) on Oct. 17, citing unidentified sources. Quartz confirmed Kam’s appointment with two sources familiar with the matter. Wanda representatives declined to comment on the news.
Disney is facing an uphill battle with its biggest theme-park rival in China, which plans to build 15 amusement park complexes in China before 2020. Wang said in a recent TV interview that he’ll make mainland China’s first Disneyland, which opened in Shanghai in June, “unprofitable in the coming two decades.”
Kam headed Hong Kong Disneyland for eight years, before he resigned in March “for personal reasons.” Under his stewardship, the decade-old theme park turned a profit for the first time in 2012, but fell into the red again in 2015 due to a drop in mainland Chinese visitors.
Wanda has so far opened two theme park complexes in China, the first in the southeastern city of Nanchang and the other in Hefei in the east. Both cities are within a four-hour train ride of Shanghai.

Theme parks are such a telling barometer of a nation's growth.

[GeneChing]

Red Star Over Hollywood: ‘Dr. Evil’ Says China Wants Movies (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-16/red-star-over-hollywood-dr-evil-says-china-wants-the-movies?bcomANews=true)
Anousha Sakoui
David McLaughlin

October 16, 2016 — 2:00 PM PDT Updated on October 17, 2016 — 4:53 AM PDT

The billboard towers over Sunset Boulevard, a marionettist’s hand, a la “The Godfather” posters of decades ago, pulling the strings in Hollywood. It poses an unsettling question: “China’s Red Puppet?”
The sign is the work of Rick Berman, a lobbyist on a mission against -- as he has framed it -- “the communist takeover of our movies.” The target, in this instance, is Dalian Wanda Group Co., owner of the second-biggest U.S. cinema chain and Legendary Entertainment, co-producer of “The Hangover.” And whose founder, billionaire Wang Jianlin, will be in Los Angeles Monday to host an event in a city whose best-known industry has embraced him.

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ixbmPP9.6xqE/v8/-1x-1.jpg
China owned U.S. billboard. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

The entertainment business may welcome the invasion of money from Wanda and other Chinese companies, but Berman sees danger. These investors are gaining power that, in his view, will be wielded to influence public opinion and tailor films to the liking of the rulers of the world’s most populous nation.
“If everything continues on the current trajectory, you will never see a Chinese villain in the movies,” he said by phone from his public affairs firm Berman & Co. in Washington. He’s known there for his hardball tactics on behalf of the food, alcohol, tobacco and energy industries, and earned the nickname Dr. Evil for his lobbying work against labor unions.
Berman’s campaign to heighten government scrutiny of the security risks of Chinese stakes in the entertainment business has captured the attention of some in Congress. It’s creating buzz and a bit of alarm in an industry that is keen for access to China’s massive box-office market and increasingly reliant on backing from its companies.

‘Very Naive’

“China is the biggest external investor, probably with the exception of Wall Street, that Hollywood has ever seen,” said Robert Cain, a consultant and partner at Pacific Bridge Pictures.
A rarity in the business, Cain said there is something to worry about in China’s grab for the so-called soft power of cultural and economic influence. “I’ve been a beneficiary of Chinese investment myself and have been very happy with the investors I’ve worked with,” but as for those who believe the Chinese are just interested in making money, “that is a very naive and even a dangerous attitude.”
Others dismiss Berman as a fear-mongerer. Janet Yang, a producer whose credits include “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” said it seemed less than coincidental that the issue was being raised in an election year in which Donald Trump has attacked China in particular and globalization in general.

Big Money

“We are not making widgets,” said Yang, whose parents were born in China. “We are making things that require incredibly deft and nuanced storytelling, and audiences are not going to put up with anything that reeks of propaganda.”
Studio executives either declined to comment or didn’t respond to calls and e-mails. The Motion Picture Association of America and Wanda declined to comment.
The Chinese have been spreading big money around the industry since 2012, when Wanda bought cinema operator AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. Several recent blockbusters -- including “Mission Impossible -- Rogue Nation” and “Terminator Genisys” -- were partly financed by Chinese companies.
“AMC Theatres is an American company run entirely by its American management team from its headquarters near Kansas City, where AMC has been located for all of its nearly 100-year history,” AMC said in a statement. “Wanda does not participate in any of the day-to-day running of AMC, nor does Wanda make any decisions related to which films play in AMC Theatres. Wanda has been a terrific shareholder for AMC, providing capital support necessary to enable AMC to dramatically renovate our movie theaters around the country.”
One of the newest studios, 2-year-old STX Entertainment, got its start with help from the Chinese private-equity firm Hony Capital and has raised millions in deals with Huayi Brothers Media Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Last week, Alibaba Pictures Group Ltd. said it was buying a stake in Amblin Partners, the production outfit backed by Steven Spielberg.

‘Different Agenda’

Wanda has been the busiest. Founded by Wang -- a former officer in the People’s Liberation Army -- the conglomerate bought Legendary in January and has a deal to make movies with Sony Corp.’s film unit. AMC plans to purchase Carmike Cinemas Inc. Wanda’s in talks to acquire a controlling stake in **** Clark Productions. And Wang has said he’d like to control one of Hollywood’s six major studios.
He’ll be promoting his company’s Qingdao Movie Metropolis, a complex under construction on China’s eastern coast, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Monday. The invitation-only event is billed as a U.S.-Sino Business Evening.
“I don’t think that Wanda is buying all these movie interests because they are trying to corner the buttered popcorn market,” Berman said. “These guys have a different agenda.”

Needing Access

Berman runs his save-Hollywood mission out of a nonprofit called the Center for American Security with a budget of $400,000, some of it his own money and some from donors he declined to identify, describing them as “national security hawks.” He set up a website -- chinaownsus.com -- to showcase his arguments. “My goal is to expose to the general public a point of view that they are not getting,” he said.

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iGbjxDlwrv_U/v0/-1x-1.jpg
Richard Berman Photographer: Daniel Rosenbaum/The New York Times via Redux Pictures

One video on the site shows the scene from “A Clockwork Orange” where Malcolm McDowell is forced to watch films with his eyes painfully propped open, to suggest Beijing could decide what movies U.S. audiences see. Another intimates that the script for “The Martian” was altered to include a pro-Chinese storyline. The Matt Damon film, it turns out, was true to the novel, in which the Chinese space program helped rescue a stranded American astronaut.
U.S. studios frankly need Chinese access as much as they do Chinese money, and rely on partnerships to distribute in that country, where regulations put sharp restrictions on foreign films. Because the market in China has such potential, Hollywood self-censors, no prodding needed, said Stanley Rosen, a University of Southern California professor who studies the relationship between China and the U.S. industry.

Dalai Lama?

“When they make a film, they will make sure it has friendly China elements, and certainly no unfriendly elements,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who owns the company.”
Studios sometimes make different versions of movies for theaters in China, where anything for public consumption has to pass the tough muster of the Film Bureau, an arm of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. “Cloud Atlas” from Warner Bros. went to cinemas there without sex scenes in 2013. Walt Disney Co. put out a special “Iron Man 3” that year with Chinese actors and bonus footage.
Pacific Bridge’s Cain, who consults for U.S. studios on how to do business in China, said it will be the absence of certain kinds of films that will be evidence of the detrimental effect of Chinese investments in Hollywood. “Who wants to be the person who got themselves blacklisted in China because they made a film about the Dalai Lama?” he said, referring to the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people who has lived in exile since China annexed Tibet.

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iLCNkd_ju7a4/v2/-1x-1.png

Entertainment is hardly the only U.S. industry attracting Chinese capital. There was more than $18 billion in direct investment from that country in the first half of 2016, according to Rhodium Group, more than the total for all of 2015.
U.S. companies with China-based parents run the gamut, from Smithfield Foods Inc. to New York’s landmark Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Those were both examined by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a panel known as CFIUS that reviews foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies.
Now, thanks to Berman, the Government Accountability Office is looking into whether the scope of CFIUS should be formally expanded, in light of what 18 members of Congress called the “serious security questions” raised by Wanda’s shopping spree. The lawmakers in a Sept. 15 letter asked the GAO to study whether CFIUS’s examinations should include a focus on propaganda and control of media and other soft-power institutions.
Wang told CNN on Sept. 28 that the two Democrats and 16 Republicans who signed the letter were “over-worried.”
Lawyers at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld cautioned clients in a note last month that the GAO review indicated the panel may increase its study of entertainment deals. “You can’t ignore it as a potential problem,” said John Burke, head of the firm’s entertainment practice.
It may be just a matter of time, and money, said Nova Daly, a senior policy adviser at Wiley Rein in Washington. “There could in theory be a point where enough investment by companies from only one country like China in the industry starts to raise eyebrows.”

Ironically, this is more about Chinese capitalism than communism.

[GeneChing]

It's never simple these days, is it?


Anti-Wanda Organization Has Past Link to Regal’s Philip Anschutz (EXCLUSIVE) (http://variety.com/2016/biz/news/wanda-anschutz-regal-carmike-amc-china-owns-us-rick-berman-1201890960/)
By Gene Maddaus, Brent Lang

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/chinaownsus.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1
OCTOBER 17, 2016 | 02:19PM PT
Over footage of the Tiananmen Square massacre, a gravel-voiced narrator warns: “When a government controls the media, they can control what you see… and what you don’t see.”

The video was produced by China Owns Us, an organization formed to warn of a wave of Chinese acquisitions in the U.S. entertainment industry. The campaign’s chief target is the Dalian Wanda Group, which owns AMC Theaters and Legendary Entertainment, and has announced plans to acquire Carmike Cinemas. The merger would make the combined company the largest cinema operator in the world.

“Would an American movie that told the story of Tiananmen Square get made today if the producers knew that the Chinese could refuse to show that movie on their 8,000-plus American movie screens, never mind movie screens in China?” another video asks.

A disclaimer at the bottom of the website states that China Owns Us is a project of the Center for American Security, which is itself affiliated with the Enterprise Freedom Action Committee. The whole thing is run by Richard Berman, a notorious D.C. figure known for stealth campaigns against unions, animal rights activists, and environmentalists.

Berman operates numerous non-profit groups that do not disclose their donors. In 2014, the New York Times received leaked audio in which Berman bragged that he could help corporate donors advance their agendas in total secrecy.

“There is total anonymity,” he said. “People don’t know who supports us.”

It is not clear who is financing Berman’s campaign against Wanda. He claims that he is funding most of the materials and that he was inspired to get involved in the issue out of alarm over the increasing amount of Chinese involvement in the entertainment industry. He is concerned that China would be able to censor speech and ideas if it continues to buy up theater chains, production entities, and get involved in slate financing deals.

“I don’t like repressive governments,” said Berman. “My goal is to shine a light on what Wanda is doing.”

But Berman does have a relationship with Philip Anschutz, the Colorado billionaire who owns a controlling stake in Regal Entertainment Group. Regal is currently the largest cinema chain in the U.S., but would be displaced if the AMC/Carmike merger is approved.

Tax records show that the Anschutz Foundation contributed $270,000 over three years to the Center for Union Facts, another Berman group. The foundation contributed $45,000 in 2012, $200,000 in 2011, and $25,000 in 2009. The Center for Union Facts campaigned against the Employee Free Choice Act, federal legislation which would have made it easier to form unions. It also campaigned against teachers’ unions. Anschutz is a major contributor to charter schools and education reform efforts.

Anschutz is famously press shy. His representatives did not return multiple calls seeking comment about China Owns Us and Berman.

“I certainly do know Phil, but he is not one of my funders,” said Berman.

He added, “I never disclose donors to my campaigns and there’s always speculation about who is funding them. I’m always amazed by how much curiosity there is. It doesn’t matter who is giving the money, it only matters if what I’m saying is accurate.”

There have also been rumors that Carmike investors, angry over the sale to AMC, are backing the campaign. Berman denied that they are playing a role.

“I have been contacted by some of them, but I’m not getting any money from Carmike shareholders,” said Berman.

Wanda has been on a buying spree of late, but it’s not the only Chinese conglomerate with business interests in Hollywood. China’s Alibaba took a minority stake in Amblin Pictures, Hony Capital and TPG Growth have invested in STX Entertainment, and Fosun is backing Studio 8, among other high-profile deals.

Berman’s campaign appears to be resonating in Washington, D.C. A bipartisan group of lawmakers have asked government agencies to examine whether or not they need to more deeply review Chinese investments.

Whatever the case, Berman does seem to be a familiar presence in Anschutz’s orbit. His 2014 speech, in which he bragged about keeping corporate contributions secret, was held at the palatial Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs.

The owner of the hotel? Phil Anschutz.

[GeneChing]

...propaganda walks? That's some serious incentive...


Dalian Wanda $8 Billion Mega-Studio Lures Hollywood With Huge Rebate, $750 Million in Incentives (http://www.thewrap.com/pacific-rim-godzilla-headline-slate-of-films-coming-to-wandas-china-mega-studio/)
Wanda CEO Wang Jianlin also confirmed that “Pacific Rim 2” and “Godzilla” would headline slate of Hollywood films shooting in China
Matt Pressberg | October 17, 2016 @ 6:13 PM

http://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/wangjianlin.jpg
Getty Images

Dalian Wanda, the Chinese conglomerate, unveiled plans for an $8 billion “movie metropolis” in Qingdao at an extraordinary event in the heart of Hollywood on Monday night, surrounded by a who’s who of Hollywood luminaries.

Wanda founder and CEO Wang Jianlin, possibly the most talked-about man in entertainment today, announced the latest steps in his plan for world domination, telling the crowd: “This is an opportunity for Hollywood. This is not a competition for Hollywood.”

The crowd filing into the “U.S.-Sino Business Evening” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater — which included the likes of Screening Room founder Sean Parker, Lionsgate co-chair Patrick Wachsberger, MGM CEO Gary Barber, Marvel Studios chairman Avi Arad — was greeted with a video montage featuring a dramatic classical music score highlighting Dalian Wanda Group’s of mega-malls, skyscrapers, theme parks and financial milestones.

It also laid out some of the Chinese conglomerate’s ambitions, including reaching $100 billion in revenue and $10 billion in profit by 2020, and — mindful of its Hollywood audience — underlined its green building credentials. And soon after, Wang — who sat next to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — took the stage to present the next chapter in Wanda’s plans to become a global force in entertainment.

Wang announced a 40 percent rebate — jointly funded by Wanda along with certain Chinese regional governments — intended to lure Hollywood production to China. More specifically, to Wanda’s under-construction Qingdao Movie Metropolis, a 408-acre studio that will include the world’s largest indoor sound stage. He noted that the incentives will total $750 million over the course of five years.

Wanda also announced the first batch of projects that will take advantage of the offering and shoot in Qingdao. “Pacific Rim 2,” produced by Wanda-owned Legendary Entertainment will be the first movie to shoot at the park when cameras roll later this month. Legendary’s “Godzilla” will also be shot there.

Lionsgate, along with China Media Capital-backed Infinity Pictures, Arad Productions, Arclight Films, Kylin Pictures, Base Media, Beijing Dirty Monkey Culture Industry Development and Juben Pictures have also agreed to shoot upcoming films at the $8.2 billion studio complex.

Wang repeatedly framed Qingdao Movie Metropolis as something that would complement Hollywood, not take business away from it.

He also provided details on the 40 percent rebate plan, which would be one of the world’s most generous. It’s being underwritten by the Qingdao regional governments in partnership with Wanda — the first time a private company has directly bankrolled an incentive plan like this.

Wanda has had an eventful 2016, beginning with its $3.5 billion purchase of Legendary Entertainment, a bout of theme park brinkmanship with Disney in June, and ongoing talks to acquire **** Clark Productions for $1 billion. Wanda’s AMC Theaters is also in discussions to acquire Carmike Cinemas, making it North America’s largest exhibitor.

The conglomerate is on pace to spend $30 billion on deals this year — half in sports and entertainment. And last month, Wang confirmed his long-rumored desire to buy a major studio, telling CNN he’s interested in buying at least 50 percent of one of the “Big Six.”

And while Wanda has been scooping up entertainment assets since buying AMC Theaters back in 2012, Washington has recently taken notice. In a three-day span earlier this month, two separate government agencies were asked to take a closer look at Wanda’s entertainment dealings, and the Washington Post published an acerbic editorial warning that “China could seek to spread pro-regime propaganda via ownership of U.S. entertainment media.”

With that backdrop, Wang decided to tone down his trademark bombast — he’s previously boasted about Wanda’s theme parks and said Disney “really shouldn’t have come to China” on state-run TV. On Monday, he adopted a more conciliatory tone, viewing Hollywood as partners, not opponents to be vanquished. However, he did state that adding Chinese cultural elements in movies makes good business sense, as China is on pace to have the world’s largest box office as soon as next year.

“From a business perspective, just look at the best way to make money,” Wang advised. “Don’t make it a political issue.”

Wang said the best way for Hollywood to capitalize on that under-tapped market is to add “Chinese cultural elements” to blockbusters. “How do you add those elements?” he asked. “You can figure it out.”

Wang was preceded on stage by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Boone Isaacs said Hollywood benefits from “cross-pollination” between American filmmakers and international partners.

“We’re not growing if we aren’t gaining new perspective,” she said. “And China is a wonderful land in which to explore new horizons.”

Boone Isaacs also announced the naming of the Wanda Library at the Academy’s museum, currently under construction.

“Simply put, Wanda has the potential to create an unprecedented bridge between the American and Chinese movie communities,” she said, citing its ability to help U.S. filmmakers wade through “political and cultural challenges” in China.

Garcetti took the stage next — to the “Indiana Jones” theme. “Dalian Wanda has been an exceptional friend to Los Angeles,” the mayor said, mentioning the company’s significant local real estate developments — such as a condominium and hotel project in Beverly Hills — and “the investments you are now making in our signature industry, the entertainment industry.”

Garcetti said he wanted to welcome companies like Wanda — even as Wang comes to town to explicitly try to recruit filming elsewhere.

Wang argued that the Qingdao park wouldn’t directly pull production from Hollywood, but from other foreign destinations that have recently become popular filming spots, such as Australia. And while Garcetti reiterated that he would be “strong in promoting Los Angeles as a place to film.”

Despite all the talk about working together, Wang couldn’t resist needling Hollywood a little bit, such as when he talked about the behind-the-camera jobs his new studio will create.

“Qingdao Movie Metropolis will increase a lot of employment opportunities for technical people in Hollywood,” Wang said. “They might even make more money at Qingdao Movie Metropolis.”

He also took a bit of a shot at what he perceived is the over-reliance of blockbusters on special effects rather than storytelling.

“From a Chinese perspective, Hollywood is the professor and Chinese filmmakers are the students,” he said. “How do you tell the teacher to increase their quality?”

[GeneChing]

Wanda Wants to Build Its Way Out of China’s Box Office Slump (http://variety.com/2016/film/asia/wanda-building-theaters-box-office-slump-1201907135/)
Patrick Frater
Asia Bureau Chief

http://i2.wp.com/pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/20141220_174341-3.jpg?crop=0px%2C94px%2C1171px%2C652px&resize=670%2C377&ssl=1
Wanda Cinema Line

NOVEMBER 2, 2016 | 11:03AM PT

Jack Gao, Wanda’s head of international developments, says that the giant Chinese group is unfazed by the recent slowdown of the Chinese box office and plans to maintain an aggressive pace of multiplex building.

“The slowdown was not a surprise,” said Gao, group VP and CEO of international investments and business development at Wanda Cultural Industry Group. He was speaking Tuesday at the Chinese-American Film Festival Summit and echoed many of the same sentiments at the U.S.-China Film & TV Expo summit on Wednesday at L.A. Live. “We didn’t expect it to happen so fast, but you know what, it is a good thing.”

China’s theatrical box office had grown in an almost unbroken upswing for almost a decade, hitting an astonishing 49% growth rate last year, to finish 2015 with a total of $6.8 billion. This year started brightly and further records were broken at Chinese New Year in February. But from June onward revenues have flatlined and the year will likely end up with single figure or low double-digit percentage growth.

Cinema-building this year means that some 8,000 new screens are likely to go live this — down from an even higher figure last year. By the year’s end, the total in operation could come close to 40,000, putting China almost on a parallel with North America, albeit with a population of 1.3 billion, compared with North America’s 300 million-plus.

“Wanda will continue to build around 1,500 screens per year for the next decade,” said Gao. Its Wanda Cinema Line division is already China’s largest private sector cinema operator. “We see box office growth of a sustainable 15% per year over that time. That will make the China market possibly 2.5 time bigger than the U.S. The number of screen count could reach 120,000 screens. We remain very optimistic.”

In another sign that Wanda intends to build its way out of the current situation, the company placed an order for 150 more Imax screens in August.

Gao also hinted that Wanda expects AMC, its U.S. exhibition subsidiary, to complete its acquisition of Carmike Cinemas by the end of the year.

120,000 screens. wow.

[GeneChing]

When an aspiring actress hangs herself from this sign, it will have arrived.


See China's Answer to the Hollywood Sign (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/see-chinas-answer-hollywood-sign-943348)
6:00 AM PDT 11/2/2016 by Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2016/10/dh_wanda_studios_qingdao_b0173fin02-embed.jpg
David Hogsholt
Wanda Studios Qingdao

High above Wanda's $8.2 billion Qingdao Movie Metropolis sits a giant sign that the company hopes will become as iconic as the celebrated Los Angeles landmark.
Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, headed by Asia's richest man, Wang Jianlin, is building the world's largest film studio on China's eastern coast, about 300 miles north of Shanghai. But to truly compete with Hollywood, Wanda needed more than just a world-class filmmaking facility — it needed a sign.
The seaside city of Qingdao is known to most Americans as the home of Tsingtao beer, but that may be about to change. Wanda, a real estate company attempting an aggressive transition into global entertainment, has invested $8.2 billion to construct the filmmaking facility in the city. Dubbed the Wanda Qingdao Movie Metropolis, the finished project will span 408 acres and comprise 45 state-of-the-art soundstages, including the world's largest, as well as China's biggest indoor and outdoor water tanks (for an inside look at the studio, see here).
Overlooking it all, perched on the upper portion of a rocky mountaintop Wanda calls "Movie Metropolis Hill," sits a gigantic sign made of four Chinese characters in white: 东方影都. In translation, they read: "Movie Metropolis of the East."
"You can see it from almost anywhere you are in the studio," says Morgan Hunwicks, a Canadian and a production veteran who spent 10 years working at Fox Studios in Sydney before joining Wanda Studios Qingdao as head of production. "The idea, obviously, is our version of the Hollywood sign," he says. "It's taller, but [not as long as] the Hollywood one."
Whether Wanda's Qingdao sign will become an iconic landmark like its counterpart across the Pacific — which has overlooked Los Angeles since 1923 — remains to be seen. But Wanda is certainly trying to make it so: To lure Hollywood projects to its studio, the company has set up on of the world's most lucrative production incentives, a 40 percent rebate for qualifying film and TV projects that shoot there. And in an effort to make the area a comfortable working environment for international film professionals, Wanda is building luxury hotels, restaurants, bars, condos, a marina, a hospital and more atop a giant artificial island out in the Yellow Sea beside the studio site.
"It's fun to be a part of a project that was built from the ground up," added Hunwicks. "During my time at Fox, I think the most we ever built was a storage shed, because the studio had been around for a while and was in an existing footprint — there's just no space. But here the horizon is the limit."

[GeneChing]

It'll be an astounding monopoly if Wanda seals this. Actually, it already is an astounding monopoly.



China's Wanda extends Hollywood push with **** Clark deal (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-****-clark-m-a-wanda-idUSKBN12Z05Y)
DEALS | Fri Nov 4, 2016 | 12:06am EDT

http://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20161104&t=2&i=1160227003&w=780&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=LYNXMPECA302K
Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group, speaks at a business event at the Bing theatre in Los Angeles, California U.S., October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

China's Dalian Wanda has agreed a $1 billion takeover of **** Clark Productions, the company that runs the Golden Globe awards and Miss America pageants, extending the Chinese property-to-entertainment conglomerate's buying spree in Hollywood.

Wanda, run by China's richest man, Wang Jianlin, said in a statement on Friday it would buy all of **** Clark Productions, an iconic name in U.S. entertainment that also produces the Academy of Country Music Awards and the Billboard Music Awards.

**** Clark's owner, media investment holding company Eldridge Industries, had said it was in talks with Wanda in September. Founded by TV presenter **** Clark, host of the "American Bandstand" pop music TV show from 1957 to 1987, the eponymous firm went public in 1986 before being taken private 16 years later.

Wanda's deal is its latest move in a cruise into Hollywood. It already owns Legendary Entertainment, co-producer of film hits such as "Jurassic World", and U.S. cinema chain AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc (AMC.N). It also has business ties with Sony Pictures and Sony Corp's (6758.T) film unit in China.

The drive has raised concern among some U.S. lawmakers about China's influence in Hollywood and the impact it might have on media in the United States. Wang has said his motivation comes from a "business perspective" and not a political one.

Wanda said in its statement that the deal marked its "first step" into television content to sit alongside its investments in theme parks, film production and sport. It added it would keep **** Clark's current management team after the deal.

In August, Wang told Reuters he expected to seal two billion-dollar deals in the U.S. this year. He aims to bring Hollywood technology and muscle to China, and has expressed interest in the so-called "big six" Hollywood studios.

Wang is now trying to attract Hollywood film makers with subsidies to a new production studio in China's eastern city of Qingdao. Meanwhile U.S. film producers are also looking for a way into China's fast-growing cinema market.

Wang predicts the Chinese box office would match the biggest market - the United States and Canada - by 2018, and grow by about 15 percent annually for the next 10 years.

Reuters first reported in June that Eldridge Industries, the U.S. owner of magazines Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter as well as **** Clark Productions, had hired investment banks to carry out a review of its media holdings.

An Eldridge representative was not immediately available for comment outside regular U.S. business hours.

(Reporting by Adam Jourdan in SHANGHAI and Liana Baker in SAN FRANSISCO; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Christopher Cushing)

[GeneChing]

...Nicole. She could redeem us all. :eek:



China's Richest Man Calls Nicole Kidman His Muse (http://www.contactmusic.net/nicole-kidman/news/china-s-richest-man-calls-nicole-kidman-his-muse_5445733)

By WENN in Movies / TV / Theatre on 03 November 2016

Nicole Kidman has learned China's richest businessman is a massive fan who idolised her when he was a young man.

http://images.contactmusic.com/newsimages/wenn29668823_1_16003_14-cm.jpg

Property developer Wang Jianlin, 62, who is reportedly worth $32.6 billion, is buying up Hollywood entertainment properties, and he tells The Hollywood Reporter the Australian actress has a very special place in his heart.

"Honestly, my muse is Nicole Kidman," he said. "When I was young, I adored her. She's very beautiful, and she's also a big name here in China."

Jianlin recently bought the U.S. movie chain AMC Entertainment and he is in negotiations to buy **** Clark Productions, the company behind the Golden Globe Awards for $1 billion. He has also snapped up U.S. themeparks, digital marketing and merchandising companies.

Jianlin is also building a film studio worth $8.2. billion in his native China.

[GeneChing]

Save us, Nicole! You're our only hope.


The company granting the Golden Globes, bought by the richest man in China (http://stocknewsusa.com/2016/11/07/company-granting-golden-globes-bought-richest-man-china/)
By Nilgun Salim - November 7, 2016

http://i2.wp.com/stocknewsusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/The-company-granting-the-Golden-Globes-bought-by-the-richest-man-in-China.jpg?resize=696%2C392
Billionaire Wang Jianlin, chairman and president of Dalian Wanda Group, poses for a portrait at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Of The New Champions in Dalian, China, on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013. Wang, China's richest man and owner of the country's biggest commercial land developer, said he has hired two investment banks to buy hotel management companies, mostly in the U.S. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Tycoon Wang Jianlin, the richest man in China, bought through his company, Dalian Wanda, **** Clark Productions, the company that awarded the Golden Globes and Miss America trophy and the Billboard Music Awards, for the sum of $1 billion, reports BBC.

The company conglomerate Dalian Wanda (with interests in different industries), owned by tycoon Wang Jianlin, paid $1 billion for **** Clark Productions, the company that granted the Golden Globes and is dealing also with the beauty contest Miss America and the Billboard Music Awards.

Jianlin’s company already controls the American cinema chain AMC, the second largest in the United States and Legendary Entertainment, the company co-producer of successful films including ‘Godzilla’ and ‘The Dark Knight Rises,’ which is in coalition with Sony Pictures.

It seems that Mr. Wang, who enjoys a personal fortune of 32 billion dollars, according to a list of the richest tycoons made recently, aimed indeed to buy companies that make the entertainment industry in the US, step by step.

Many people suspect that it is only a matter of time before the Chinese will become a major shareholder in one of the six largest film studios in Hollywood. Earlier this year, he was about to buy a 49% stake in Paramount Pictures, Viacom, before the deal was not completed as a result of misunderstanding the parties.

Dalian Wanda representatives said **** Clark Productions acquisition is ‘the first step’ for Wanda in the television production.

But long before this deal, some American politicians were already worried about China’s influence in Hollywood and the media in the United States – whether it was censoring the media or pro-Chinese propaganda.

In September, 16 members of the US Congress have demanded greater control of foreign investments, noting the company Dalian Wanda.

Mr. Wang has not been away from his ambition to make China a dominant global force in entertainment and bring ‘more Chinese elements’ in the spotlight.

[GeneChing]

Wow. Jade floors? I know where I want to stay (http://www.wandahotels.com/en/) next time I go to China....if only. :rolleyes:


Is this China’s most luxurious hotel? The new £415m seven-star venue that has jade floors, a 7,750-square-foot ballroom and four nightclubs (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3913380/Is-China-s-luxurious-hotel-new-415m-seven-star-venue-jade-floors-7-750-square-foot-ballroom-four-nightclubs.html?ITO=applenews)

The Wanda Reign on the Bund hotel in Shanghai, China, took more than three years to build
The 20-storey building combines art deco style and early 20th-century Chinese design
The venue is full of marble columns, chandeliers, contemporary art and expensive antiques

By CAROLINE MCGUIRE FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 03:01 EST, 8 November 2016 | UPDATED: 03:03 EST, 8 November 2016

China has opened its first seven-star hotel, with opulence to rival the finest establishments in London, New York and Dubai.
The Wanda Reign on the Bund in Shanghai took three years to build and cost more than £415million ($515million) to complete, thanks to the elaborate details inside.
The building was designed by the British company Foster + Partners and combines art deco with early 20th century Chinese design, such as magnolias and traditional Suzhou embroidery.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/07/17/3A267C0C00000578-3913380-China_has_opened_it_first_seven_star_hotel_the_Wan da_Reign_on_th-a-18_1478539468589.jpg
China has opened its first seven-star hotel, the Wanda Reign on the Bund in Shanghai, which is situated along the Huangpu River

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/07/17/3A267DE100000578-3913380-In_the_lobby_guests_walk_across_jade_inlaid_floors _among_marble_-a-19_1478539468590.jpg
In the lobby, guests walk across jade inlaid floors and among marble columns and mosaic walls

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/07/17/3A267F6100000578-3913380-The_elaborate_design_is_continued_throughout_the_i nterior_with_h-a-20_1478539468592.jpg
The elaborate design is continued throughout the interior, with huge windows looking out over the city's skyline in the hotel's four restaurants

In the lobby, guests walk across jade inlaid floors, among marble columns and mosaic walls, with modern art by contemporary Chinese artists and antique furniture taking pride of place.
The elaborate design is continued throughout the interior, with huge chandeliers and stained-glass windows in the four dining rooms, which feature a Marc restaurant by Michelin-starred French chef, Marc Meneau, a cafe, a Chinese restaurant, a Japanese eaterie and a lobby lounge.
For events, there is also a 7,750-square-foot ballroom with 180-degree views of the Pudong skyline and the Huangpu River and a 26-foot-tall ceiling.
The hotel also houses what is possibly the most glamorous karaoke room - Universe KTV. Each of the four private club rooms comes with its own dance floor, disco lasers and top-of-the-line audio-visual equipment.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/07/17/3A267ADC00000578-3913380-A_****tail_bar_terrarce_allows_guests_to_enjoy_a_d rink_with_view-a-21_1478539468593.jpg
A ****tail bar terrarce allows guests to enjoy a drink with views over the city's Huangpu River

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/07/17/3A267D4E00000578-3913380-The_hotel_also_houses_what_is_possibly_the_most_gl amorous_karaok-a-22_1478539468595.jpg
The hotel also houses what is possibly the most glamorous karaoke room - Universe KTV

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/07/17/3A267CAB00000578-3913380-The_288_square_metre_Chairman_Suite_on_the_20th_fl oor_has_its_ow-a-23_1478539468596.jpg
The 3,100-square-foot Chairman Suite on the 20th floor has its own living room with 180-degree views

Its nightlife zone Club Reign also has its own wine and cigar bar and an outdoor ****tail bar.
To work off the hangover the following day, guests can book themselves into one of the three private suites in the Shui Spa.
Each spa suite has its own sauna and steam rooms, large cold and hot plunge pools, treatment rooms and entertainment rooms.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/07/17/3A267DA200000578-3913380-Modern_art_by_contemporary_Chinese_artists_and_ant ique_furniture-a-24_1478539468597.jpg
Modern art by contemporary Chinese artists and antique furniture takes pride of place on the walls

The 193 guest bedrooms, which start at £345 ($430), have also been equipped with state-of-the-art technology, with massage chairs and digital mini peep holes in the doors.
But the best room by far is the 3,100-square-foot Chairman Suite on the 20th floor.
The suite has a living room, dining area with adjoining pantry, stylish bar, separate study room, and a master bathroom with a sauna and a large massage bathtub.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/07/17/3A267E5700000578-3913380-Guests_can_book_themselves_into_one_of_the_three_p rivate_suites_-a-25_1478539468600.jpg
Guests can book themselves into one of the three private suites in the Shui Spa. Each spa suite has its own sauna and steam rooms, large cold and hot plunge pools, treatment rooms and entertainment rooms

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/07/17/3A267E4200000578-3913380-The_Chairman_Suite_has_its_own_living_room_dining_ area_with_adjo-a-26_1478539468601.jpg
The Chairman Suite has its own living room, dining area with adjoining pantry, stylish bar and separate study room

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/07/17/3A267EC100000578-3913380-The_193_guest_bedrooms_have_been_equipped_with_sta te_of_the_art_-a-27_1478539468603.jpg
The 193 guest bedrooms have been equipped with state-of-the-art technology, including massage chairs and digital mini peep holes in the doors

[GeneChing]

Fri Nov 11, 2016 | 5:06am EST
Dalian Wanda to invest $14.7 billion in tourism, mall projects in China's south (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dalian-wanda-malls-idUSKBN1360VH)

http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20161111&t=2&i=1161294920&w=780&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&sq=&r=LYNXMPECAA0IV
Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group, speaks at a business event at the Bing theatre in Los Angeles, California U.S., October 17, 2016. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group Co Ltd said on Friday it will increase its investment in the southern province of Hunan by 100 billion yuan ($14.69 billion) to build a mega cultural and tourism project and 15 shopping malls.

Wanda, owned by China's richest man, Wang Jianlin, said most of the investment will go to Changsha, Hunan's capital city. It will add five more "Wanda Plaza" shopping malls in the city, and spend 50 billion yuan to build a "Wanda City" - a development that usually includes theme parks, shopping malls, hotels and residential projects.

"The entry of (more) Wanda Plazas will significantly raise the business standard in Hunan cities, stimulate consumption, increase stable tax income and create a lot of jobs in the service industry," Wanda said in a statement. They will "enhance the transformation and upgrade of Hunan's economic structure."

Wanda is building similar projects around the country, betting that China's rising incomes will drive more domestic tourism. In an interview with Reuters in August, Wang said that Wanda would look to build at least 20 such complexes in China.

The group last saw the opening of a tourism park in the eastern city of Hefei in September.

Wang has been open about his rivalry with Walt Disney Co (DIS.N), which opened a $5.5 billion resort in Shanghai in June.

($1 = 6.8078 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Clare Jim)

The yuan has been sliding about since our election.

[GeneChing]

...here we go...:rolleyes:


Wanda Chairman Warns Donald Trump About Blocking Chinese Investment in U.S. (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wanda-chairman-warns-donald-trump-blocking-chinese-investment-us-955037)
11:48 PM PST 12/10/2016 by Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2016/10/gettyimages-456030003-h_2016.jpg
VCG/VCG via Getty Images
Wang Jianlin

Facing calls for greater scrutiny of his acquisitions, Wang Jianlin said actions to curb Chinese investment could jeopardize the jobs of 20,000 Americans.

China's richest man has asked Chris Dodd, chairman of the Motion Picture Associate of America, to deliver a message to President-elect Donald Trump.

Wang Jianlin, the billionaire chairman of Chinese real estate and entertainment conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group, says he told the MPAA chief on Friday that any move by Trump to curb Chinese investment in the U.S. could jeopardize the jobs of Wanda's 20,000 American employees.

"I met the president of the MPAA yesterday and he said he would like to meet Mr. Trump and asked me what I wanted to tell him," Wang said Saturday during a forum in Beijing. "I told him that I've invested over $10 billion in the U.S., employing over 20,000 people. If something goes wrong, these 20,000-plus people might be out of jobs."

He also noted how Hollywood companies have begun to depend on China — the world's No. 2 film market — as a key revenue driver.

"Other things aside, in the film and entertainment industry, you have to understand that English-language films are relying on the Chinese market for growth," said Wang.

Over the past few years, Wang's Wanda, which got its start in real estate development, has emerged as China's most aggressive investor in the U.S. media sector. The company bought U.S. theater chain AMC entertainment for $2.6 billion in 2012, and it has a pending deal to merge AMC with Carmike Cinemas, creating North American's largest cinema circuit. In January, the conglomerate paid a reported $3.5 billion to acquire Legendary Entertainment, the Burbank-based studio behind Pacific Rim and the upcoming The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon. Following a major partnership with Sony Pictures, Wang told The Hollywood Reporter in November that he planned to invest in all six of the big U.S. studios. Wanda also has a pending $1 billion deal to buy Dick Clark Productions, owner of the Golden Globes and other glitzy Hollywood awards shows.

This acquisition blitz has begun to unnerve some U.S. lawmakers. In September, 16 members of the House of Representatives wrote a joint letter asking the U.S. Government Accountability Office to consider creating more scrutiny of Chinese acquisitions of domestic entertainment companies. Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer lent Democratic support to the issue earlier this month, penning his own letter to the U.S. Treasury Secretary and president-elect Trump, arguing that such buyouts should be examined more closely. He also lamented the fact that China bars U.S. firms from making equivalent media buys within its own borders. Both letters mentioned Wanda by name.

Wang was asked about the backlash on Saturday, during a Q&A session following his speech in Beijing.

"This proves two things," he said, according to a transcript. "First, it shows that we have some influence in the United States, otherwise [the lawmakers] would not have named us."

Second, Wang said the U.S. Congress is a place of free speech, where lawmakers often make suggestions that don't reflect the whole of U.S. policy intent.

"So, we will wait and watch for Mr. Trump's attitude toward Chinese entertainment companies once he takes office," he added.

[GeneChing]

...where can I apply? ;)



As son refuses father’s fortune, China’s richest man seeks ‘application’ for heir (http://en.southlive.in/world/2016/12/13/as-son-refuses-fathers-fortune-chinas-richest-man-seeks-application-for-heir)
December 13, 2016, 10:05 am

http://quintype-01.imgix.net/southlive-english%2F2016-12%2F9cafea5f-4070-4698-850d-e9d512c2f66b%2F0208_wang-jianlin-amc_1200x675-1200x675.jpg?auto=format&rect=0,0,1280,720&q=60&fm=pjpeg

The richest man in China, Wang Jianlin, owning a $92 billion (620600 crore) empire, on Sunday said he is looking for a successor, most likely from a group of professional managers, to take over his business after his son apparently declined to take over his empire.

The 62-year-old, founder and chairman of Dalian Wanda Group Co, whose business includes shopping malls, theme parks, sports clubs and cinemas, said he is most likely to pick from a group of professional managers to take over the running of his business.


I have asked my son about the succession plan, and he said he does not want to live a life like I do. Perhaps young people have their own quests and priorities. Probably it will be better to hand over to professional managers and we sit on the board and see them run the company
- Wang Jianlin

Wang was speaking at China Entrepreneurs Summit on Monday.

The wealthy scions of China's billionaire entrepreneurs, known as fu'erdai are increasingly striking different paths, as more than three decades of break-neck economic growth and overseas education have given them different experiences, worldview and aspirations from their parents.

Over 80 percent of Chinese heirs are not keen on assuming the reins of their parents' businesses, a survey by the Shanghai Jiaotong University, covering 182 of the country's top family-run companies said.

Some were backing off due to intense pressures, while others simply were pursuing other career interests, study by the association of Chinese private enterprises showed, the Post report said.

Dalian Wanda, founded in the port city of Dalian in 1988, is the epitome of China's rags-to-wealth story, where it grew from a small property developer into a conglomerate operating malls, hotels, theme parks and the world's largest chain of movie cinemas.

In the process, it's made Mr Wang and his only son immensely wealthy.

Wang, who visited India and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi had committed to invest about $10 billion in a Chinese project in Haryana.

Following a worldwide buying spree that added AMC Entertainment, the Hoyts Group and Odeon and UCI Cinemas, Mr Wanda now operates the world's largest chain of cinemas, with more than 10,000 screens.

It also owns hotels operated by Westin and Sofitel, as well as shopping malls and plans to build as many as 15 multibillion-yuan theme parks around the country.

After snapping up stakes in European football clubs, Wanda is now turning its sights on Hollywood, announcing plans to purchase Dick Clark Productions in November that granted it the broadcasting rights to Golden Globe Awards.

[GeneChing]

RED SCARE.

Been waiting for some pundit to drop that about Wanda. I'm not that worried because China just can't seem to get it together enough to make a global blockbuster yet. The movie industry will follow America which follows capitalism, at least for a few more years.


It’s a ‘Wanda-ful’ life
A Chinese conglomerate is poised to take over U.S. movie theaters (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/2/chinese-conglomerate-poised-to-take-over-us-movie-/)

http://twt-thumbs.washtimes.com/media/image/2017/01/02/1_2_2017_b3-berm-dragon-film8201_c0-212-2200-1494_s885x516.jpg?6b1ce7de556e1becb23dd89b1aba988b bf3874e8

By Richard Berman - - Monday, January 2, 2017
ANALYSIS/OPINION:

In 2017, America will likely have a new leader in movie theaters.
The shareholders of Carmike Cinemas — the fourth-largest movie theater operator in the United States — recently agreed on a deal to sell the company to AMC Entertainment for $1.2 billion. Now granted conditional approval by the Justice Department, the merger will make AMC the largest movie theater chain in the country with 8,380 screens in more than 600 cinemas nationwide.
So what’s the big deal? According to AMC CEO Adam Aron, there isn’t one. He argues that the merger is business as usual because “AMC is completely run by its American management in Leewood, Kansas, as American as an American place in the heartland you can find.” There’s one apparent problem with that description: AMC’s parent company is Dalian Wanda, a Chinese Communist Party-supported firm. Company chairman Wang Jianlin says, “[AMC‘s] boss is Chinese, so more Chinese films should be in their theaters .” Maybe something got lost in the translation.
Mr. Wang’s words — and his track record — cut to the heart of the issue. He is a former Communist deputy who served in the People’s Liberation Army for almost two decades. Mr. Wang claims to “stay close to the [Chinese] government,” steering more than $1 billion in state subsidies from the Communist Party — which has vowed to “build its capacity in international communication” — to Wanda, Beijing’s foot soldier on the ground. (The heavy subsidization is expected from a country that invests $10 billion annually in external propaganda.)
Mr. Wang has sold company stakes to relatives of some of China’s most powerful politicians and business executives, including the business partner of former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s daughter and relatives of two members of the Politburo — the Communist Party’s principal policymaking committee.
Mr. Wang’s Wanda sees high-dollar mergers and acquisitions as an avenue to accumulate soft power, which the Chinese government can leverage to influence U.S. public opinion. By expanding his control of U.S. movie theaters, Mr. Wang gains access to major distribution channels and the ability to block certain movies from playing in his cinemas if they criticize the Chinese military or communist dogma — opening the doors for censorship under our noses.
Consider that when Wanda acquired the film studio Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion earlier this year, it praised China’s “largest cross-border cultural acquisition to date.” Or take Mr. Wang’s recent suggestion that “there needs to be more Chinese elements in films.” Nowhere does he mention buttered popcorn or soda sales — which Mr. Aron maintains is AMC’s priority.
Censorship is not a stretch. Wanda recently bankrolled the $25 million production budget for “Southpaw” — becoming the first Chinese firm to “solely finance an American movie” — only to leave its fingerprints everywhere. According to David Glasser, who helped produce and market the film, “[Wanda was] involved — it wasn’t just a silent investment.” Mr. Glasser went even further: “They were on the set and involved in production, post-production, marketing, everything.”
AMC’s U.S. management team can claim that “Wanda does not participate in any of the day-to-day running of AMC,” but production, post-production and marketing represent every step along Hollywood’s supply chain.
The aggressive posturing has even caught Congress’ eye. In September, Rep. Robert Pittenger, North Carolina Republican, and 15 other House members asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) — an interagency committee with the power to block foreign purchases of U.S. assets — has jurisdiction over purchases in the U.S. movie industry, namely those carried out by Wanda. Just weeks later, Rep. John Culberson, Texas Republican, asked the Justice Department to take a closer look at Wanda’s purchases. Even incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York opined on the matter, imploring Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman to review CFIUS’ charter.
They’re right to be concerned. The AMC-Carmike deal is America’s new red scare. And this one is real.

• Richard Berman is the president of Berman and Company, a public affairs firm in Washington, D.C.

[GeneChing]

China & Hollywood: What Lies Beneath & Ahead In 2017 (http://deadline.com/2017/01/china-hollywood-deals-2017-donald-trump-1201875991/)
by Anita Busch
and Nancy Tartaglione
January 5, 2017 6:15am

https://cfmedia.deadline.com/2016/11/donald-trump-china-flag.jpg?w=446&h=299&crop=1
Rex/Shutterstock

With a very vocal Donald Trump ready to become President of the United States, his appointments of trade policy maker Peter Navarro (who penned the book and subsequent documentary Death By China) and protectionist advocate Robert Lighthizer as United States Trade Representative, and Republicans and Democrats alike questioning China’s moves in the U.S., the political climate between China and the U.S is tense. It also means Chinese companies and their growing investments in the entertainment industry will face even greater scrutiny in 2017.

Not only are Chinese firms in general buying up farmland in the U.S. Midwest, hotels, insurance companies and real estate in the biggest American cities, but in 2015 and 2016, Middle Kingdom movers also began descending on Hollywood in a big way. And maybe it’s because of Trump’s insight into what has been happening in the U.S. real estate market that has led to his well-established and oft-stated negative views on China: Remember, Beijing-based real estate conglom Dalian Wanda Group’s U.S.-owned theaters via AMC and now Carmike (the latter in a just-closed $1.2B deal that creates the largest movie exhibitor in the U.S.) are sitting on prime real estate and have gathered up a fair share in the U.S.

Money talks in a capitalistic society, and as Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science at USC specializing in China, told Deadline this year: “Basically, Hollywood is cashing in and Hollywood is in the business of selling out.”

All of this comes as the USTR will begin negotiating a new contract with China in February on behalf of the film industry.

The current Hollywood acquisitions spree isn’t seen as slowing in the face of a crackdown by Chinese authorities to investigate deals outside companies’ core businesses (as is thought was an issue with Anhui Xinke’s proposed – and aborted — acquisition of Voltage Pictures last month). Says one industry observer: “The money is always going to be there… it’s a free market economy. In this period, China is always going to win.”

https://cfmedia.deadline.com/2016/09/wanda-china.jpg?w=301&h=202&crop=1
Associated Press

Wanda led the Hollywood charge by opening 2015 with the acquisition of Legendary Entertainment in a deal for $3.5B cash. It is built on performance guarantees and was said to have provided no upfront cash to Legendary co-founder Thomas Tull. (Wanda decided later in the year to delay putting the company into its entertainment portfolio because of the tenuous state of China’s stock market).

Wanda Group chairman and CEO Wang Jianlin, one of China’s richest men and who heads the company that already bought AMC in a $2.6B deal in 2012, has made no bones about wanting to own a major Hollywood studio. He almost got his wish last year at Paramount under Rob Moore, the vice chairman who proposed to his Chinese girlfriend Betty Zhou (host of a Chinese TV show he co-created) just days before he was shown the door in September.

However, Paramount parent Viacom said no to a deal that would have allowed Wanda a 49% interest in the studio. Interestingly, Paramount’s Oscar contender Arrival shows the Chinese as the world’s aggressor and then peacemaker against aliens. One of the major concerns from American politicians is propagandized content.

Paramount had — and continues to — open its doors to Chinese investment. Alibaba Pictures made its first investment in Paramount/Skydance’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation in 2014 and then invested in the studio’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, and Star Trek Beyond. Huahau Media has also increasingly been a marketing partner. Alibaba Digital Media & Entertainment Group recently said it is planning to invest another $7.2B over the next three years.

Perhaps to strengthen its ties in Hollywood, Wanda also made a a deal with Sony which has a theme park component. The deal allows Wanda to take minority stake in some studio tentpoles. For Sony, it gives them production coin while also giving its product an outlet in Wanda parks, extending the revenue stream there and in other areas. There is currently a line of thinking in town that Sony might eventually sell a portion or all of the studios to Wanda.

Many more entertainment companies have sought and received investments from China, such as STX Entertainment and Studio 8. And it seems everyone is lining up to live-stream into China. (Yes, Wanda has even tried to acquire STX). Netflix tried to get into the marketplace but was late to the party (or shut out). Lionsgate, which has been streaming through China’s largest online video platform iQIYI since fall 2014 — recently signed a long-term output deal for its features and library titles.

In October, with an election looming between Trump and Hillary Clinton and Wanda having already come under scrutiny from 17 lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who wanted the company investigated for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Wanda forged ahead with a presentation in Los Angeles.

FARA, initiated to thwart foreign agents from infiltrating the U.S. government with propaganda, requires those acting as agents of foreign countries to make a public disclosure of their relationship with their government. Wang makes no bones about his tight allegiance and friendship with the Chinese government. USC professor Rosen told Deadline earlier this year that “There’s no such thing as purely private company in China because of the importance of Communist party committee, so any private company has to be very careful of not falling afoul of what the Communist party might expect. Wanda more than most because of (Jianlin)’s 11 years in the military, he is also from Dalian and he has other ties to party officials.” Fosun chariman and Studio 8 financier Guo Guangchang went missing last year right about this time — it was widely thought that he was picked up for questioning by the Chinese government.

On October 16, Wang and Jack Gao, Wanda’s chief executive of international investments and business developments for the Wanda Cultural Industry Group, descended on LACMA on Wilshire Boulevard joined by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti all pitching better China-Hollywood relationships. The center of attention was Wanda’s state-of-the-art Qingdao Movie Metropolis complex, where the filmmaking community was urged to make movies. Chinese officials announced as a motivator a 40% subsidy, which is considered high in comparison to what other countries provide.

Some are biting: Joe Johnston will be directing Starfall, a $100 million-budgeted sci-fi film at Wanda’s Qingdao Studios with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, Erik Howsam and Infinity Pictures’ Dede Nickerson producing. The film will be co-financed by Lionsgate, Wanda and Infinity Pictures, which is a China Media Capital-backed company.

Others are not that thrilled about traveling halfway around the world to shoot a film. As one filmmaker told Deadline, “I don’t know why we couldn’t just shoot here (in the States). We have blue screen here.” continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://cfmedia.deadline.com/2016/12/passengers-china.jpg?w=301&h=202&crop=1
Stephen Hamel

Still, just this week, it came to light that Passengers producer Stephen Hamel is opening an office in Beijing for his Company Films to produce a slate of both English- and Mandarin-language film and TV projects, some of which will star Hamel’s friend/partner Keanu Reeves.

Regardless of political maneuverings, China is a market that cannot be ignored because it is seen as the next frontier, with more than 1.2 billion potential consumers. Wanda is expanding in exhibition in China, building out more theaters in the territory expected overtake North America box office by 2018 — and becoming the No. 1 market in the world — despite a slowdown in growth in 2016. Box office receipts in China are expected to double U.S. results by 2023.

At the Los Angeles gathering in October, AMPAS’ Boone Isaacs rallied in support of Wanda, taking to the stage at the Chinese company’s dog-and-pony show to say that the U.S. film history wing will be renamed the Wanda Wing. What she didn’t say there was that it came after Wanda donated $20M to the Academy.

She also said of China, “We have so much in common, not just because the industry is global but because the values are universal.” This, as the Human Rights Watch has consistently condemned China for human and civil rights violations. It is no secret the government keeps certain American films out of circulation there (Ghostbusters comes to mind, though ghosts are on the list of China Film Bureau’s no fly-zones even for Chinese movies) and they also heavily censor the Internet and have banned Twitter since 2012.

Boone Isaacs’ sentiment about “sharing the same values” would be reiterated a month later when Chinese businessman Jack Ma announced his e-commerce conglom Alibaba was taking a minority stake in Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners.

Also at the L.A. event, Garcetti called Wanda’s Gao “a brother,” noting Chinese companies’ large real estate holdings in Los Angeles — it is estimated that Chinese firms now own half of the buildings in downtown LA — and urged filmmakers to head out of Los Angeles and into China. This, as runaway production is a constant concern among local unions in Los Angeles.

https://cfmedia.deadline.com/2016/12/chris-dodd-mpaa.jpg?w=201&h=260
REX/Shutterstock

MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd also, surprisingly, took part in a promotional video for Wanda. The MPAA has long battled piracy and has named China as one of the worst offenders. Dodd’s predecessor, the late Jack Valenti, worked vigorously to stop China’s pirating of films.

When Trump started talking tariffs against China during the campaign, Wang said he asked Dodd to send a message to the eventual President-elect, threatening Trump’s hard stance against China and saying that position could cost the U.S. about 20,000 jobs (he was counting the number of companies in which they are invested).

The last USTR film industry contract in 2012 saw the quota rise from 25 to 34 films with a revenue-share hike. (There is a widely held misconception that the revenue-share films are currently capped at 34 per year. But, according to the agreement, 34 is a floor and not a ceiling.) It’s understood that the companies are beginning to align on what terms will be sought.

China’s People’s Daily noted that there is a line of thought that the big studios may, at some point, release their own films. “Local companies can already apply for distribution licenses but have not taken advantage of the ability thus far,” it wrote. “Even if they did, they would still need to go through the censorship process, and only China Film Group, which essentially controls the market, can apply for an import license.”

Meanwhile, no true ancillary markets exist in China, so Amblin’s play, for example, was economic. As one former executive with experience overseeing a studio’s international division put it: “It’s the only ancillary money you get out of China. Alibaba is Amazon and Walmart put together. They are enormous so everyone is rushing to do a deal with them.”

Why? Because there is a 50% tax to the government on box office and then they split 50-50 with the distributor, so only about 25% is actually coming back to Hollywood (although that’s considered pure-play, falling directly to the negative since P&A is inexpensive in the PROC, though growing). TV is also controlled by the government. The DVD market is basically pirated. Alibaba right now, we’re told, is talking about possibly giving better terms than a 50-50 split.

Still, with Trump on his way with a new trade czar who is suspicious of China, along with lawmakers already leery, 2017 may just be the year that Navarro alluded to when he wrote his 2006 book The Coming China Wars.

One U.S. executive who has been working with the Chinese reckons that if the Trump administration continues on its present course, that “could be the biggest challenge facing Hollywood” in 2017.

“The first place you see retaliation from the Chinese government is shutting down messaging from the West (in the form of movies, TV, press, etc.). The Ministry of Propaganda controls messaging to the masses, and mitigating messaging from the West is part of that.” The exec notes that the exception would be messaging that may show the complete dysfunction of the U.S. government, à la House Of Cards.

In the meantime, those who know the situation with Wanda say that Wang is over-leveraged in real estate bets in two-tier and three-tier cities and has looming debt issues, and is doing whatever he can to beef up the company. And in China, even in business, you must show “a cultural good” for the people when you buy and sell property. “People talk about censorship and content, but it’s not about content,” said one U.S.-based executive who works with Chinese firms. “He is trying to buy assets to bring into China, to shore up his multiple to wash away debt.”

So it seems partnerships may be mutually beneficial in some cases, but with the Trump administration coming this month and all eyes on Chinese investment, the future remains tenuous.

Chris Fenton, a trustee of the Washington DC-based U.S.-Asia Institute and also president of Los Angeles- and Beijing-based DMG Entertainment, recalls being in China during the U.S. election. “Sentiment there regarding the results was initially positive. They viewed President-elect Trump as a transparent businessman and someone they could comfortably negotiate trade policy, etc. with,” he told Deadline. “That said, much has happened since, ruffling feathers in the U.S.-China relationship.

“The amount of calls I’ve received from offices of U.S. Congressional members expressing interest in the institute’s 2017 Congressional member delegation trips to China is unprecedented,” he continued. “Additionally, anxious calls from Hollywood executives curious how U.S. lawmakers and regulators will deal with the U.S./China relationship moving forward has surged. The motivation to understand the Chinese point of view and to find common ground is indeed there, but the challenges and obstacles look to be rising in the coming year.”
We've discussed several of the titles mentioned in this article but I'm only going to leave this here.

[GeneChing]

China’s Wanda Sees Asset Value Hit $115 Billion in 2016 (http://variety.com/2017/biz/asia/wanda-sees-asset-value-hit-115-billion-1201960520/)
Patrick Frater
Asia Bureau Chief

http://i1.wp.com/pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/wang-jianlin-rexfeatures_5768317a-res2.jpg?crop=0px%2C64px%2C1650px%2C919px&resize=670%2C377&ssl=1
PHOTO BY GERRY SHIH/AP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
JANUARY 14, 2017 | 12:48AM PT

China’s privately-controlled Dalian Wanda group disclosed net assets of $115 billion (RMB796 billion,) an increase of 21%, at the end of 2016.

The figures were announced Saturday at the group’s annual staff meeting. It also reported a double digit increase in profits, built on a 3.4% increase in operating income in 2016. Definition of double digits specified.

Chairman Wang Jianlin said that the performance in 2016 represented a reduced emphasis on commercial property, and a rebalancing towards entertainment, tourism and sports.

The expanding cultural group saw income increase by 25% to RMB64.1 billion. That included RMB39.2 billion of revenue from cinema exhibition, distribution and production. Data for Legendary Entertainment, acquired last year in a $3.5 billion deal, was not disclosed.

During 2016 the separately listed Wanda Cinema Line opened 154 new cinemas with a combined 1,391 screens. With the acquisitions it also made in the exhibition space last year, that lifted Wanda’s year end screen count to 14,347 worldwide.

Tourism revenue, mostly from theme parks, climbed 37% to RMB17.4 billion. Sports income grew 9% to RMB6.4 billion.

14,347 screens worldwide. :eek:

[GeneChing]

China's Wanda Reports 31 Percent Increase in Film Income in 2016 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chinas-wanda-reports-31-percent-increase-film-income-2016-964425)
7:44 AM PST 1/15/2017 by Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn5.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2016/03/gettyimages-481013316.jpg
Getty Images
Wang Jianlin

But the conglomerate's overall revenue fell for the first time in 11 years, due to a slump in its core real estate business.
China's Dalian Wanda Group, led by the country's richest man, Wang Jianlin, reported a 13.9 percent drop in revenue for 2016, due to a slump in the conglomerate's core commercial property business.

The group said Saturday that operating income rose to 254.98 billion yuan ($36.96 billion at current exchange rates) in 2016, while unaudited net profit grew by "double-digits." The company did not release profit data, nor a full-year revenue total for 2016 beyond noting the 13.9 percent decline. Wanda's total revenue in 2015 was 290.2 billion yuan. Last year's decline marks the first revenue dip in 11 years at the company.

Real estate sales also made up less than 50 percent of Wanda's revenue for the first time ever in 2016. Wanda's commercial real estate arm, which owns over 130 major commercial plazas, saw income fall 25 percent to 143 billion yuan.

Over the past five years, Wang has been mounting an aggressive diversification into what Wanda calls the "culture industry," comprising the entertainment, sports and tourism sectors. Believing that the high-growth era for China's real estate sector is in its twilight, Wang hopes to capitalize on Beijing's push to transition the country to a consumer-led economy. The company also has sought to diversify overseas as China's GDP growth cools.

Last year, Wanda acquired U.S. film studio Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion and Dick Clark Productions, owner of the Golden Globe Awards and Miss America pageants, for $1 billion. In December, Wanda-owned AMC Entertainment completed acquisitions of Carmike Cinemas and Odeon and UCI Cinemas in the U.K., becoming the largest movie theater operator in both North America and Europe.

Wanda reported Saturday that income from its global film operations climbed 31.4 percent in 2016 to 39.2 billion yuan.

Wanda opened 677 new cinemas around the world last year, hitting a total of 6,788 screens. In China alone, the company added 1,391 screens. At the end of 2016, Wanda's global totals were 1,352 cinemas and 14,347 screens.

Wanda's Culture Industry Group, which comprises the company's film production and exhibitions businesses, theme parks, sports holdings and children's entertainment, saw sales climb 25 percent last year to 64.1 billion yuan.

Reflecting Wanda's massive expansions into the theme park business, tourism income was up 37.1 percent in 2016 to 17.43 billion yuan. Wang has pledged tens of billions to build 15 mega-resorts, dubbed "Wanda Cities," across China by the end of the decade. The company also is building the world's largest film studio in eastern China, which began partial operation in November.

Last year, Wanda was forced to press pause on plans to publicly list core business units in China. The group was looking to merge its movie production subsidiaries, including Legendary, with its local exhibition business, Wanda China Line, which is listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange. Wanda abruptly backed away from that plan in August, however, saying that Legendary needed to show that it can turn a profit on its own before a merger. In May, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Legendary lost more than $500 million in 2015.

Wanda pulled Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties off the Hong Kong exchange last year, aiming to relist in Mainland China, where valuations usually have been much higher. Wang faces challenges in bringing the unit to an IPO in Shenzhen or Shanghai, however. There is a years-long backlog of companies seek regulatory approval for IPOs, and the government has increased scrutiny of "backdoor listings," the practice of buying and merging with small publicly traded companies to skip the usual review process. Nonetheless, Bloomberg reported in November that Wanda was in talks with several publicly traded takeover candidates.

130 major commercial plazas. Wang Jianlin should run for president of the PRC. ;)

[GeneChing]

...Wanda is about much more than just AMC now.

Is it just me or does the Dick Clark logo seem ironically phallic?


Wanda Faces Hurdles in Closing Dick Clark Prods. Deal (EXCLUSIVE) (http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/wanda-dick-clark-productions-china-investment-closing-deal-1201971069/)
By Gene Maddaus,
Cynthia Littleton

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/dick-clark-productions-logo-dcp.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1
COURTESY OF DICK CLARK PRODUCTIONS
JANUARY 27, 2017 | 04:28PM PT
The Dalian Wanda Group announced its eye-popping $1 billion deal to buy Dick Clark Prods. back on Nov. 4. But the transaction is taking longer than expected to close, stirring chatter in the media finance community as political conditions on both sides of the Pacific appear to pose hurdles for Chinese investment in Hollywood.

Sources close to the situation still expect Wanda to close the acquisition sometime in February, and say that the only speed bump has been that some details are still being worked out. With the Chinese New Year holiday beginning on Saturday, work is expected to be halted for at least the next week.

One person said that work on the deal also came to a standstill a few weeks ago, amid concerns that the nationalistic focus of the new Trump administration might mean greater scrutiny to big investments in the U.S. by Wanda, Alibaba and the new breed of Sino mega conglomerates. The Dick Clark Prods. transaction was only the most recent mega-acquisition for Wanda, which also bought Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion last year and AMC Theaters for $2.6 billion in 2012. Wanda’s buying spree has caught the attention of members of both parties in Congress, who worry that they could mark a strategic extension of Chinese “soft power.”

Chinese overseas investment jumped by 50% in 2016, according to an estimate compiled by the American Enterprise Institute. The U.S. was by far the largest recipient with a record-setting $50 billion of Chinese investment.

However, China has been taking steps to curtail overseas investment. AEI projects that the number of Chinese deals will decline in 2017. China’s efforts to stem capital flight could pose a complicating factor as Wanda seeks to close the Dick Clark Productions deal. In December, Chinese metals company Xinke abruptly and mysteriously dropped its deal to buy a majority stake in Voltage Pictures for $345 million, opting to buy a Hong Kong entertainment company instead. Voltage is now suing to recover a $4 million deposit.

In Hollywood, observers are still astounded at the $1 billion price tag for DCP. Guggenheim Partners bought the company in 2012 for $370 million, and at the time many considered that price to be inflated. Dick Clark Productions in late 2015 changed hands again when investor Todd Boehly left Guggenheim, taking DCP, the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and other assets with him to the new Eldridge Industries banner.

Dick Clark Prods.’ biggest franchises are its award shows, notable the Golden Globes, the Academy of Country Music Awards, and the American Music Awards. It’s also the home of ABC’s annual “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” specials, which made headlines this year for problems during Mariah Carey’s live performance.

With Dick Clark Prods., sources said the company is moving forward as if the Wanda acquisition is a done deal. There’s excitement at the prospect of being part of a larger entity with ample resources at its disposal. But getting the deal to the finish line is proving more complicated in the current political climate than both sides expected.

Wanda and Eldridge Industries each declined to comment.

[GeneChing]

Hollywood is getting a lot of unexpected twists lately. :rolleyes:


Hollywood is left hanging as China reins in investments (http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/hollywood-is-left-hanging-as-china-reins-in-investments-117022700066_1.html)
Deals stall amid capital curbs, including one that would have put MGM under Chinese control
Alistair Barr & Mark Bergen | WSJ
February 27, 2017 Last Updated at 02:51 IST

http://bsmedia.business-standard.com/_media/bs/img/article/2016-09/20/full/1474378054-9219.jpg
Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Wanda Group

China’s crackdown on overseas investment is hitting Hollywood, torpedoing a deal that would have put Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios under Chinese control and placing other high-profile acquisitions in limbo.

Talks broke down between MGM and several Chinese companies late last year, an apparent casualty of China’s move to stanch capital outflows that has stalled the country’s shopping spree in Hollywood, according to people familiar with the matter.

The change comes after years of Chinese companies striking large deals, including the $3.5 billion acquisition of Legendary Entertainment in 2016 and a $1 billion film-financing infusion for Paramount Pictures last month.

An MGM sale would have been among the biggest-ticket and highest-profile such acquisitions, but its failure to materialize is evidence of a twist ending that few in Hollywood expected.

Beijing’s capital-control policy, which began in November, has kept deals such as the $1 billion acquisition of Dick Clark Productions by real-estate conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group Co. from closing, according to people familiar with the matter, and scuttled the takeover of smaller production companies.

The new dynamic highlights Hollywood’s dependence on China, where the slightest change in state policy has ripple effects across the entertainment industry. China’s deep pockets have become a frequent topic of speculation and intrigue among entertainment executives, some of whom see the country as full of prospective buyers willing to pay high premiums for flashy Hollywood holdings.

The economic-policy changes in China come amid mounting protectionist rhetoric in the U.S. from the administration of President Donald Trump.“We’ve heard from both [private-equity] firms and investment banks that China investment activity around [Hollywood] assets started to wane just prior to the election and is almost nonexistent now,” said Chris Fenton, a trustee of the U.S.-Asia Institute, which organizes congressional delegations to China, and president of DMG Entertainment, a media company headquartered in Beverly Hills and Beijing. “No China entity wants to be the first to test” the heated rhetoric on the U.S. side and the capital controls on the Chinese side, he added.

An MGM spokeswoman said: “MGM is in the strongest position ever and is not for sale.”Once known for producing classics of Hollywood’s Golden Age such as “The Wizard of Oz” and “Singin’ in the Rain,” MGM is now much smaller, owned by private-equity firms and long considered a likely takeover target. The studio’s most valuable asset is its film library, which includes several thousand titles, including co-ownership of numerous James Bond films.

Interest in MGM from China heated up last year when Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures considered a rich acquisition offer from Wanda, according to a person familiar with the matter.

MGM wasn’t the subject of a formal auction process, according to a different person familiar with the matter, and has indicated to potential business partners that it may pursue a public stock offering in the next couple of years.

Chinese companies last year announced a record $225 billion in international purchases. Beijing keeps tight controls on money flowing out of the nation, concerned such capital flight could shake confidence in its economy and potentially weaken the yuan. That has led to greater scrutiny of overseas acquisitions to ensure they aren’t being made to evade capital controls.

Chinese companies that want to invest internationally typically submit applications to at least two regulators: the Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner. Once those applications are approved, the decision moves to a third regulator, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. Regulators are still accepting applications, a person involved in Chinese outbound media deals said, but some applications appear to be in limbo and haven’t received a formal response, which has ground deals to a virtual halt.

In recent years, China has become a go-to source of capital for Hollywood. Studios have co-financed productions with Chinese firms and raked in billions in ticket sales in the country, now the world’s No. 2 box-office market.

But to some extent any deal with China represents a roll of the dice, said one longtime Hollywood executive. In the U.S., it is relatively easy to predict what might trip up government regulators, but in China there is little transparency about the state’s concerns.

“You have no way to assess what they might say about a deal,” the executive said.

In December, Chinese metals manufacturer Anhui Xinke New Materials Co. said it was canceling its roughly $350 million acquisition of Voltage Pictures LLC, a Los Angeles film financing and production company best known for “The Hurt Locker” and “Dallas Buyers Club.”

“They were really close to the end of the deal,” said a person close to Voltage. “Suddenly, the deal’s off and they never really got any clear communication from Xinke as to why.”

Voltage is suing Xinke and the Chinese company’s law firm for breach of contract, seeking more than $300 million in damages. Xinke has said in regulatory filings to the Shanghai Stock Exchange that Voltage didn’t provide additional information requested by that regulator. Xinke didn’t return calls or an email seeking comment.

On Thursday, China-based Recon Holding announced it would pay $100 million for a 51% stake in Millennium Films of Los Angeles, which produces “The Expendables” and “Olympus Has Fallen” franchises, and has a library of nearly 300 films. A person close to the deal said the crackdown made Recon more sensitive to regulatory concerns, adding that Chinese support for the transaction was helped by the fact that Millennium films have performed well in Chinese theaters. Wanda’s purchase of Dick Clark Productions, producer of the Golden Globes and other awards shows, was announced in November, but it is in limbo, according to people familiar with the matter. Dick Clark’s current owner, Eldridge Industries, still expects the deal to close, according to a person close to the company.

Wanda has had little trouble in the past getting money out of China for such deals. It paid $3.5 billion in early 2016 for Legendary Entertainment, which produced “The Great Wall,” and its AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. theatrical chain has acquired several other exhibitors around the world in recent years. Wang Jianlin, Wanda’s chairman and China’s richest man, has repeatedly said he wants to own a major Hollywood studio.

[GeneChing]

How Wanda May Recover After 'Great Wall' and Dick Clark Productions (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-wanda-may-recover-great-wall-dick-clark-productions-986025)
3:00 PM PDT 3/14/2017 by Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2016/06/wang_jianlin.jpg
Getty Images
Wang Jianlin

Following the disappointing box office of the Matt Damon starrer and the collapse of a billion-dollar acquisition, China’s most ambitious film outlet finds itself at a crossroads.

Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group has hit a rough patch.

After breaking ground on the world’s biggest film studio, assembling the world’s largest movie theater chain and pledging to invest billions more in all six of the major Hollywood studios, China’s richest man now faces an inflection point in his global expansion plans.

Last Friday, Wanda’s latest entertainment mega-deal — a $1 billion takeover of Dick Clark Productions, the TV production company behind the Golden Globes — officially went bust. Dick Clark’s owner Eldridge Industries said in a statement that one of its affiliates “terminated” the deal and had sued to recover half of a $50 million “reverse termination fee” connected to the agreement. (Wanda declined to comment.)

The meltdown follows widespread industry skepticism over the steep $3.5 billion Wanda paid for Legendary Entertainment last year. With the studio’s latest releases (Warcraft, The Great Wall) losing money, Legendary’s founder and CEO Thomas Tull announced in January that he was resigning to “pursue new interests” — although sources at the time said Wanda showed him the door.

The Dick Clark transaction is believed to have been derailed by Beijing’s extensive and ongoing crackdown on overseas investment by Chinese firms. Concerned by the record amounts of capital exiting the country, and the high price and spotty performance of many of the assets acquired, regulators have put a damper on outbound dealmaking.

The same day that the Dick Clark deal was abandoned, China’s top central banker, Zhou Xiaochuan, questioned the strategy behind recent acquisitions. “Some are not in line with our requirements and policies for overseas investment, such as in sports, entertainment and clubs,” he said. “This didn’t bring much benefit to China and caused some complaints overseas.”

“Wanda does take a credibility hit here,” says Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science who specializes in the Chinese film industry. “If they abandoned the deal because they realized late that they were vastly overpaying for the actual assets, as some have suggested, you have to wonder how it got this far and who was advising Wang.”

Allowing observers to assume that the Chinese government was behind the breakdown, meanwhile, presents alternate credibility issues. “Is Wanda really a fully independent company, as Wang always argues, if the Chinese government can step in and veto any deal they make?” Rosen adds.

Still, few believe the setbacks will compel Wang to change course. “Wanda has reached a stretch of the road that’s a little bumpier, but they’re not going to turn back,” says Lindsay Conner, an attorney with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips who has extensive China experience. “They may be selective, but I believe Wanda will continue its strategy of expansion by acquisition.”

“It’s pretty clear that Wanda isn’t going to be able to buy one of the [major U.S.] studios anytime soon,” says an exec working for one of the majors in Beijing, noting the increased hawkishness towards China both in the Trump administration and Congress, as well as the rising protectionism in Beijing. Instead, insiders expect Wanda to focus on expanding Legendary — which recently got some much-needed good news in the strong U.S. and international opening of Kong: Skull Island — and making the $8.2 billion Qingdao studio project a success.

With Wanda not able to pour its capital into Hollywood, Qingdao will become an even more important piece of its overall expansion strategy, but the key will be attracting more Hollywood projects.

“The Dick Clark news won’t affect the progress of the Qingdao studio in any significant way,” says the exec. “Producers will look at the [40 percent] incentive, which is generous, and the studio’s reputation after more projects shoot there.”

Adds Conner, “Wanda has a long-term stake in this business and one project or deal, up or down, will not affect that."

Warcraft (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69449-Warcraft) and The Great Wall (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?64980-The-Great-Wall) only lost money in the US. They did fine in PRC.

[GeneChing]

Rebates plus Chinese co-production which opens the China market. Irresistible.


Wanda's $8B China Studio Offers Unique Hollywood Incentive (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wandas-8b-china-studio-offers-unique-hollywood-incentive-988942)
9:00 AM PDT 4/4/2017 by Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn2.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2017/03/qingdao_oriental_movie_metropolis_wanda_group.jpg
Newscom
The Movie Metropolis in Qingdao, China

Projects that shoot at the Movie Metropolis in Qingdao receive a 40  percent rebate; 'Pacific Rim 2' and 'Godzilla 2' are already taking advantage of the incentives.
The biggest development in the inter*national incentives arena is offered at Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group's estimated $8 billion studio in Qingdao, China. As Wanda announced at a splashy event in Los Angeles last fall, projects that shoot at the Wanda Movie Metropolis receive a 40 percent rebate, bankrolled by the regional government and Wanda from a development fund worth $750 million to be spread over five years. The rebate for a qualifying film is capped at $18 million.

Wanda's Qingdao studio is now approximately 30 percent complete, with 15 soundstages and 11 production workshops up and running. Leading studio operator and production services firm Pinewood Shepperton served as the lead consultant on the project. Among the stages in operation is a high-tech, airport-hangar-sized structure of 6,000 square meters (about 65,000 square feet), which ties a stage at Pinewood London as the world's largest film stage. Once completed, Wanda's Movie Metropolis will contain China's largest outdoor and indoor underwater stages, 221 acres of backlot and 45 soundstages comprising nearly twice the square footage of Universal, Hollywood's biggest filmmaking facility.

Central to Wanda's pitch to the international industry is the assertion that Qingdao, a historic port city on China's eastern coast, can be a comfortable, even pleasant, place to produce entertainment. To that end, Wanda is spending billions to construct a small city's worth of upscale amenities around the studio, including luxury hotels, restaurants and bars, upscale condos, Asia's largest theater, a convention center, shopping malls, four indoor theme parks, an international hospital and even a school.

Soon, buzz will begin to travel through the international productions services grapevine on what it's actually like to work in Wandaland. The pipeline from Legendary Entertainment — which Wanda bought for $3.5 billion in 2016 — is already flowing through the studio (Pacific Rim 2 and Godzilla 2 are the first projects at Qingdao), while Lionsgate and ArcLight Films also have signed on to shoot there.

A version of this story first appeared in the March 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

[GeneChing]

Wanda Boards Paramount's 'Transformers 5' as Marketing Partner in China
5:41 AM PDT 6/19/2017 by Patrick Brzeski

http://cdn3.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2017/06/t_2.png

At a glitzy event held during the Shanghai Film Festival, Wanda also unveiled a 27-film slate and a strategic content partnership with Chinese internet giant Tencent.

China's Dalian Wanda Group has boarded Paramount Pictures' Transformers: The Last Knight.

Wanda will market and promote the film in China through its vast cinema network, while also serving as a merchandising partner in the country. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

The firm unveiled the deal Monday during a characteristically extravagant announcement ceremony at the Wanda Reign seven-star hotel in central Shanghai. A cluster of overseas film figures, such as Julie Delpy and Sunny Pawar (the child star of Lion), and visiting executives like AMC Entertainment vp Elizabeth Frank, were in attendance for the packed-house event.

Wanda is the third Chinese firm to board Transformers 5. Last week, Weying Technology bought a stake in the film, saying it was entitled to an undisclosed share of global revenue for the movie, including theatrical, video, TV, VOD and merchandising. Chinese film company Huahua Media, which served as a marketing partner on Transformers 4, announced an unspecified stake in the new film at a Shanghai signing ceremony in December.

The Transformers partnership was just one piece of a sweeping slate Wanda unveiled Monday. Central to the conglomerate's vision for the film sector this year is a strategic partnership with Shenzhen-based internet giant Tencent. The companies are calling their partnership approach the "Intelligent People Strategy" — as in IP — with plans to recruit experienced talent and directors to develop original intellectual property to serve as the basis for film, television, VR, gaming projects and kids entertainment.

Throughout the lengthy presentation, Wanda Pictures unveiled no less than 27 titles on its film production and investment slate, spanning Chinese-language comedies, romantic comedies, actions projects, kids films and more. Among the most high-profile of the many titles was the big-budget fantasy action film Robosaur Wars, about giant battling robot dinosaurs, to be directed by Lu Chuan, who won best director at the 2009 Asian Film Awards for his art-house favorite City of Life and Death, and whose nature documentary Born in China was recently released worldwide by Disney Nature.

Wanda (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69324-Wanda-amp-AMC) + Transformers (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?47070-Transformers)

[GeneChing]

Soon to break that $1B?


Wanda Film Eyes Further Acquisitions, Reports Higher First-Half Profit (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wanda-film-eyes-acquisitions-reports-higher-first-profit-1018954)
1:34 AM PDT 7/6/2017 by Patrick Brzeski

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Dalian Wanda Group chairman Wang Jianlin

The Chinese conglomerate, headed by billionaire Wang Jianlin, sparked speculation in industry circles this week as trading in its film arm's stock was suspended pending the acquisition of "film-related assets."
Despite lackluster growth at the Chinese box office, Beijing-based conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group reported a solid uptick in operating income at its film unit during the first half of 2017.

Wanda Film Holding Co., formerly known as Wanda Cinema Line, reported operating income of 6.65 billion yuan ($980.1 million) from January to June, an increase of 16 percent over the year-ago period.

Wanda Film contains Wanda Group's Chinese movie theater circuit and other film-related entities, such as film merchandising company Mtime, which the conglomerate acquired for $350 million last year. U.S.-based Legendary Entertainment and several of Wanda's local Chinese movie businesses are not housed within the unit, however — although Wanda has stated that it hopes to eventually consolidate its film assets into the publicly traded entity.

A brief earnings report released by the company to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Monday stated that Wanda Film currently operates 445 cinemas in China, with a total of 4,000 screens. The total gives Wanda just under a 10 percent share of China's total screen count. According to the country's media regulator, China now has 47,000 screens versus nearly 41,000 in the U.S.

In a separate filing Thursday, Dalian Wanda Group said first-half revenue surged 12 percent across the group as a whole. The property developer turned global entertainment powerhouse, headed by Wang Jianlin, one of China's richest individuals, said January to June revenue reached 134.85 billion yuan ($19.8 billion), exceeding internal targets. The company does not provide profit figures for its privately held business units.

The conglomerate's culture industry group — which includes publicly traded Wanda Film, domestic Chinese film production and distribution businesses, Legendary Entertainment and AMC Entertainment in the U.S., along with British yacht maker Sunseeker and other assets — reported a revenue increase of 5.9 percent to 30.8 billion yuan.

The revenue gains were strongest in Wanda's financial group — another area of investment and expansion — where revenue rose 46.8 percent to 20.6 billion yuan.

Wanda has been one of China's most internationally acquisitive private businesses, snapping up entertainment, sports and tourism assets around the world. The heavy spending has attracted the notice of Beijing regulators, who asked local banks to assess their exposure to the recent borrowing by Wanda, Fosun and other Chinese giants.

Wanda appears to have lost little of its appetite for expansion, however. Earlier this week, Wanda Film shares were suspended from trading on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, pending "plans to acquire film-related assets."

[GeneChing]

Here's Wang's 'wolf pack' comment on the WAnda & AMC thread (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69324-Wanda-amp-AMC&p=1295652#post1295652) - so much for the Chinese theme parks (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?62642-Chinese-Theme-Parks) play...


China's Wanda Retreats From Theme Park Business With $9.3 Billion Deal (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chinas-wanda-retreats-theme-park-business-93-billion-deal-1019589)
11:53 PM PDT 7/9/2017 by Patrick Brzeski

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Wang Jianlin

Just last year, the company's billionaire chairman Wang Jianlin boasted that his "wolf pack" of theme parks would drive the Walt Disney Co. out of China.

Dalian Wanda Group, led by Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin, says it has reached a landmark deal to sell its theme park business to Sunac China for $9.3 billion.

The agreement — which is said to be the second-biggest real estate transaction ever in China — signals a major deescalation of Wanda's once mighty ambitions in the theme park sector. Wang, one of China's most prominent businessmen, announced plans just last year to build at least 20 major location-based tourism projects across the Middle Kingdom. At the time, he also boasted that his "wolf pack" of theme parks would drive the Walt Disney Co.'s "lone tiger" — Shanghai Disneyland — out of the country.

Under the terms of the deal with Sunac, Wanda is selling a 91 percent stake in nearly all of its current and planned tourism projects, including three recently launched theme parks, and 72 of its 102 hotels in China.

The deal is understood to be part of Wanda's drive to cut its massive debt load and bolster its case with Beijing regulators for an IPO. The conglomerate pulled its core property unit off of the Hong Kong stock exchange last year, with plans to relist in mainland China, where valuations are among the world's highest.

Wanda said Sunac will take over responsibility for the tourism projects' loans and financing, while Wanda will continue to design, build and manage the resorts under its own brand name.

Wanda did not officially state a reason for the sale, but in an interview with Chinese business outlet Caixin, Wang said the deal would substantially reduce Wanda's debt and move the company closer to the "asset-light" model he has been publicly espousing for some time.

"Through this asset transfer, Wanda Commercial's debt ratio will be greatly reduced, all the proceeds will be used to repay loans. Wanda Commercial plans to repay most of the bank loans this year," Wang told Caixin.

Best known in China as a real estate developer, Wanda began building theme parks a few years ago as part of an aggressive diversification into what China calls the "culture industry," comprising the entertainment, sports and tourism sectors. Believing the high-growth era for the country's real estate industry to be in its twilight, Wang has tried to pivot his conglomerate to capitalize on the Chinese government's efforts to transition the country towards a consumer-led economy. Wang also sought to establish his conglomerate as one of the leading flag-bearers for China Inc. overseas.

The twin endeavors have entailed acquiring domestic and international cinema chains — such as North America's largest, AMC Entertainment — and an array of overseas sports and leisure assets, such as British yacht-maker Sunseeker, the company behind the Iron Man triathlon races, and U.S. movie studio Legendary Entertainment.

The theme park sell-off could be viewed as Wanda's response to the Chinese government's mounting concerns over the level of red ink coursing through the national economy — particularly the systemic threats posed by the recent, debt-fueled buying sprees of China's large conglomerates. Last month, the China Central Banking Commission instructed state banks to assess their exposure to the debt raised by several local giants, including Wanda, to finance overseas acquisitions.

The deal with Sunac also may be a tacit admission of just how much Wanda has struggled to devise a winning formula in the complex theme parks business. The company's first major attraction, Wanda Movie Park Wuhan, opened in central China in late 2014 and closed within months after early admission numbers plummeted. Wanda said the park was shutting down temporarily for upgrades, but it has yet to reopen. The company's major theme park development in Nanchang — which Wang talked up on state television last year while publicly dismissing Disney's Chinese theme park ambitions — reported attendance of approximately 1.3 million in its first seven months. Shanghai Disneyland, meanwhile, hit 11 million visitors in its first full year.

Sunac is one of China's largest real estate developers, based in the Eastern Chinese city of Tianjin. The company is led by Sun Hongbin, whose net worth Forbes estimates to be $2 billion. Sunac has become an increasingly visible dealmaker. Earlier this year, it threw a lifeline to Beijing-based LeEco Holdings, investing $2.2 billion in the troubled tech and entertainment company.

Wanda says the $9.3 billion deal with Sunac will be finalized in a detailed agreement later this month.

[GeneChing]

AMC Theatres on Chinese Restrictions: Wanda "Has Never Been a Source of Acquisition Funding" (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/amc-theatres-chinese-restrictions-wanda-has-never-been-a-source-acquisition-funding-1021990)
7:04 AM PDT 7/18/2017 by Georg Szalai , Patrick Brzeski

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China's top banking regulators have ordered the country's largest financial institutions to stop lending to tycoon Wang Jianlin's Wanda to finance its overseas entertainment acquisitions.

AMC Theatres has commented on restrictions recently put on Chinese owner Dalian Wanda Group by clarifying that "Dalian Wanda has never been a source of acquisition funding for AMC."

"Mainland China-based banks have never been a source of any funding for AMC," the theater chain also said in an extended statement released Tuesday.

AMC's stock was up about 2.8 percent at $20.25 at 10:15 a.m. ET after the company commented on the situation.

The Chinese government's top banking regulators have ordered the country's largest financial institutions to stop lending to tycoon Wang Jianlin's Wanda to finance its overseas entertainment acquisitions, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

It said that six of Wanda's recent overseas acquisitions — including AMC's deals to acquire Carmike Cinemas and the Nordic Cinema Group — were subject to the government's restrictions on capital outflows unveiled last year. A source told the paper that the actions can be expected to prevent Wanda from generating new financing in China for past offshore deals.

AMC said Tuesday that "at no time was Wanda ever a source of funding" for the theater chain's acquisitions of Starplex, Odeon, Carmike or Nordic.

"AMC has never received committed financing from any bank headquartered in mainland China for any purpose, including for acquisitions," the company added. "All committed debt financing for AMC’s three most recent acquisitions were funded by a syndicate of U.S.-based banks with AMC as the borrower without financial guarantees or credit enhancements from Wanda. The fourth acquisition was funded by AMC’s available cash on hand."

Beyond that, AMC said "intercompany transactions" with Wanda are "de minimis" and "typically immaterial" amounts that include the Chinese company reimbursing AMC for administrative and other expenses. Total reimbursements of expenses from Wanda for 2017 are expected to be less than $600,000, it said.

“AMC is an American company run from its Leawood, Kansas, headquarters by our management teams located in the U.S. and Europe,” AMC CEO Adam Aron said. “Our shares are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and our shareholder roster includes some of the biggest U.S.-based institutional investors, as well as Dalian Wanda, which owns a majority of our shares. Wanda has been a terrific shareholder, and we are grateful for Wanda’s support of AMC’s efforts over the past few years to grow our business, to increase our profitability, to sustain some 45,000 U.S. and European jobs for AMC employees and to improve the movie going experience for our more than 350 million U.S. and European guests each year. Wanda does not actively participate in the day-to-day running of AMC beyond the board of directors service of three Wanda executives side-by-side with six American directors on the AMC board. Accordingly, recent press reports notwithstanding, we greatly look forward to Wanda’s continued support as an AMC shareholder.”

Credit Suisse analyst Omar Sheikh had on Monday cut his target price on AMC's stock by $3 to $17, citing the report "that the Chinese government may enforce capital restrictions on AMC's 58 percent shareholder." He wrote in a report: "This heightens the risk that AMC will not have a 'backstop' financing partner going forward –- as the U.S. box office continues to weaken in the third quarter and ahead of the potential launch of a new premium VOD window, this is likely to continue to compress AMC's multiple, in our view." He has an "underperform" rating on the stock.

Sheikh also explained: "We do not believe Wanda will look to sell its shareholding in AMC, as it did with its theme park assets, but we would argue that it is also unlikely that they will step in to provide debt financing, or to buy out the minorities, in future."

After what he called "a steep decline" in the stock, Sheikh said "we are intrigued by AMC's valuation" but explained that he isn't recommending the stock right now due to the company's debt leverage "and a potentially profound upcoming change in the industry's 13-week exclusivity period for exploiting movie content." Concluded the analyst: "We would argue the risks of owning the stock remain high."

Interesting that this comes out during the WH's Buy American and Hire American Executive Order (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/04/18/presidential-executive-order-buy-american-and-hire-american).

[GeneChing]

The power of maliciousness is on the rise nowadays. :(


China's Wanda Stock Crashes Amid Rumor of Chairman's Detainment (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chinas-wanda-hit-share-crash-rumors-chairmans-detainment-1033281)
10:54 PM PDT 8/27/2017 by Patrick Brzeski

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Wang Jianlin

Wanda said the claim — first carried on a Chinese-language blog — was "false and malicious."
Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group forcefully denied rumors that its billionaire chairman Wang Jianlin was detained by authorities and forbidden to leave China. But the damage had already been done to shares in its Hong Kong-listed subsidiary, which plummeted some 10 percent on Monday.

Wanda moved quickly to respond to the turmoil, saying the reports were false and malicious.

"Certain individuals with ulterior motives have recently created and spread various vicious rumors regarding the chairman of Wanda Group, Mr. Wang Jianlin," the company said in a statement.

The rumor, variations of which have been circulating online in China for months, was carried by a Taiwanese blog before being picked up by several more established Chinese tabloids. The blog claimed that Wang was stopped, with his family, while attempting to depart the Chinese city of Tianjian aboard a private jet bound for the U.K.

Because of the power and opacity with which the state lords over private industry in China, investors in prominent firms are always on edge over real or perceived signs of political disfavor. And Chinese business leaders have gone missing before. In December 2015, Chinese conglomerate Fosun lost contact with its billionaire chairman Guo Guangcheng, leading to speculation that he had been picked up on corruption charges. Guo later resurfaced with the explanation that he was "assisting" the Chinese authorities with a special investigation.

Wanda, along with Fosun, Anbang Insurance and HNA Group, has been at the center of an escalating government crackdown on corporate debt and capital outflows. Sources say Chinese banks have been instructed to stop lending to several of Wanda's overseas acquisitions in the entertainment, real estate and sports sectors.

Dalian Wanda Hotel Development, listed in Hong Kong, saw its shares fall as much as 11 percent on Monday, while fellow subsidiary Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties saw the yield on its U.S. dollar bonds rise 27 basis points, according to the Financial Times. Share prices had mostly bounced back following Wanda's statement, however.

More of Wanda's statement: "Wanda Group strongly reiterates that all of these rumors are utterly baseless and have ulterior motives behind them. Wanda Group encourages the public not to believe the rumors or spread them further. We have reported the situation to relevant government department and also reported the case to public security authorities. Wanda Group is determined to protect its rights with legal actions and pursue legal actions against the relevant media."

[GeneChing]

All I can say here is that I luv watching Chinese movies on the big screen, thanks to Wanda & AMC. :)


China’s Dalian Wanda Group Sues Online Critics Over ‘Malicious Rumors’ (http://www.thewrap.com/chinas-dalian-wanda-group-sues-online-critics-malicious-rumors/)
The AMC Theatres owner is fighting back against bloggers
Matt Pressberg | September 5, 2017 @ 7:48 PM

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Dalian Wanda Group, the Chinese conglomerate that owns Hollywood assets including AMC Theatres and Legendary Entertainment, has filed lawsuits in Chinese courts against several internet users whom it accuses of spreading “malicious rumors” about the company, Dalian Wanda said in a statement late Monday.

Wanda has filed suits against several accounts on WeChat (China’s leading social media platform), including “Financial Bread,” “Dimeng Smart Transportation,” “New People Magazine” and “Three Board of Telecommunications” and Weibo (blogging) accounts including “Coyote-Abraham,” “Asia News Weekly,” “Shangqizhuang,” “Peaceful Mouth,” “Wu Xiaowei, “Iebrun” and others.

Wanda is also considering filing a lawsuit in the U.S. against another company, Boxun, which it branded as an “overseas rumormonger.”

Last month, Wanda was hit with reports claiming that its billionaire chairman, Wang Jianlin, was prevented from leaving China, which the company called “groundless.” But the company evidently decided to fight back with more than just strong words.

In its statement, Wanda claims it has been defamed by those WeChat and Weibo account holders. The company cited interpretations from China’s Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate that internet users are guilty of defamation if their false posts have been clicked on more than 5,000 times or generated more than 500 reposts.


It is asking for damages of 5 million yuan (about $750,000) and a public apology. If Wanda decides to go through with its Boxun suit, it will request $2 million in compensation as well as a public apology.

Wanda is also collecting information about other WeChat and Weibo accounts it accuses of “illegally spread[ing] rumors.” The company said its action isn’t just to protect itself, but to use “legal measures to issue a warning to media outlets lacking ethics or basic moral standards as well as to help create a cleaner Internet environment.”

[GeneChing]

Chinese Investors Unload Stakes in Wanda's Legendary Entertainment (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chinese-investors-unload-stakes-wandas-legendary-entertainment-1043522)
12:06 AM PDT 9/27/2017 by Patrick Brzeski

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Wang Jianlin

Under the terms of an earlier fundraising agreement and failed merger plan, Wanda was forced to buy back two companies' combined $237 million stake in the troubled Los Angeles studio.

Two Chinese investors have sold their stakes in Legendary Entertainment, the Burbank-based studio owned by billionaire Wang Jianlin's Dalian Wanda Group.

Chinese conglomerate Oceanwide Holdings has sold a $217 million (RMB 1.44 billion) stake in Legendary, while Hangzhou-based production company Zhejiang Huace Film and TV Co. offloaded $20 million (RMB 133.4 million) in holdings, first-half financial reports from the two publicly traded Chinese companies show. Bloomberg was the first to report the sales.

Shortly after Wanda acquired Legendary in a landmark $3.5 billion deal last year, the conglomerate offered Chinese investors a piece of the action in a $1.5 billion fundraise. At the time, Wanda said it intended to merge Legendary with its publicly traded Wanda Cinema Line unit, which was expected to generate a windfall, as Chinese entertainment stocks were then red-hot.

The conglomerate promised investors a 15 percent return if it failed to bring Legendary public within 12 months, according to an offering presentation seen by THR at the time.

But that deadline has since passed, and Wanda is understood to have bought back Oceanwide's and Huace's holdings at a loss (Huace's financial report indicates that it received a 16 percent return on the investment). Insiders say they believe Wanda has been forced to buy back stakes from other investors, too. Although Wanda's 2016 fundraise initially was pegged at $1.5 billion, the company is known to have raised much more. Just weeks after its plans were made public, a vice president at the firm said it had already raised $2.4 billion.

Wanda's merger plans for Legendary were derailed when Chinese regulators upped their scrutiny of such transactions involving publicacly traded companies. Wanda soon withdrew the offer, saying the deal was premature and wouldn't be in the best interest of minority investors. The company said that Legendary needed to show that it could turn a profit on its own before being folded into the listed cinema business. The Hollywood Reporter had reported in May 2016 that Legendary had lost $580 million the year prior.

Wanda's forced investment buyback, while not a surprise, is the latest knock for the Chinese property and entertainment giant, which has been beset by blows to its once expansionist ambitions in the global film sector. Wanda and other acquisitive Chinese conglomerates are under heavy government pressure to reduce their debt loads, and Beijing is known to have instructed state banks to stop lending to Wanda to finance its overseas entertainment acquisitions.

Legendary, which has a pricey film slate underway, including Pacific Rim: Uprising with Universal and other high-risk tentpoles, insists it won't need to rely on its Chinese company as a financial backstop anytime soon, whatever the regulatory issues in Beijing. "Legendary is well capitalized with liquidity to fund its film and TV slates and operate its business as usual," the company said in July, at the peak of Wanda's political predicament.

Meanwhile, one of Wang's top deputies, Zeng Maojun, president of the conglomerate's film division, is known to have been dispatched to Los Angeles this week to meet with Hollywood heavyweights and try to assuage concerns about Wanda's commitment the international entertainment sector over the long term.

So they're banking on Pacific Rim (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69735-Pacific-Rim-Maelstrom) now?


Wanda Exec to Reaffirm Hollywood Ambitions with High-Profile Los Angeles Visit (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/wanda-exec-reaffirm-hollywood-ambitions-high-profile-los-angeles-visit-1043508)
8:01 PM PDT 9/26/2017 by Patrick Brzeski

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Wang Jianlin

One of Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin's top deputies addressed Hollywood industry players at a closed-door meeting Tuesday.
Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin has dispatched one of his top film executives to Los Angeles this week to reassure his Dalian Wanda Group conglomerate's many Hollywood partners that he remains committed to the entertainment business.

Zeng Maojun, president of Wanda Film Holding Co., spoke Tuesday at a 90-minute closed-door meeting held at the AMC Century City 15 cinema, which Wanda owns. According to a source with knowledge of the plans, the purpose of the event was to allay concerns among Hollywood heavyweights that Wanda might be retreating from its ambitions in the U.S. film sector because of recent Chinese government scrutiny of its outbound investment activity.

It's understood that Zeng, who leads the Wanda division responsible for AMC Entertainment, Legendary Entertainment and Wanda Pictures (the conglomerate's Chinese production arm), has been holding additional meetings around Hollywood before and after the address. The exec also is underlining the centrality of his home market to the global industry's future growth. The exec's speech Tuesday was titled, "Chinese Market Update: Driving Global Box Office Growth," according to Bloomberg, which got a copy of an invite. While the North American box office is coming off one of its worst summers in years, China's theatrical film market surged 24 percent from June to August.

The U.S. industry has good reason to wonder where Wang's Hollywood strategy currently stands. After snapping up trophy assets at a blistering clip, Wanda and other Chinese conglomerates, including Fosun International and HNA Group, recently have come under heavy scrutiny in Beijing over their high debtloads and pricey dealmaking — a pattern government authorities have sought to crack down on because of perceived systemic risks to the Chinese financial sector. Regulators are understood to have instructed China's state banks to suspend all new lending to the conglomerates' offshore acquisitions, such as Wanda-owned Legendary Entertainment and AMC Entertainment.

In a strategic turnabout, Wang, who had previously boasted of wanting to buy a major Hollywood studio, responded to the government's call in July by saying that Wanda's future investment plans would focus on domestic Chinese assets. Those statements were matched by a surprise retreat from China's domestic theme park sector, with Wang announcing a hurried deal to offload the bulk of Wanda's destination entertainment and hotel holdings to two other local property developers for $9.5 billion.

[GeneChing]

A tycoon (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69088-Chinese-Tycoons-CEOs-amp-Tuhao) gets shut down. Not just any tycoon - Wanda (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69324-Wanda-amp-AMC)'s Wang Jianlin. :eek:


China is shutting down this billionaire's golf courses amid fears the sport breeds corruption (http://www.businessinsider.com/wang-jianlin-china-orders-dalian-wanda-golf-courses-shut-down-2017-10)
Alexandra Ma

http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/578b2de7dd0895c8308b45aa-2400/wang%20jianlin.jpg
Wang Jianlin. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
Two luxury golf courses have been ordered to shut down in China, where the sport has been declared an elitist "sport for millionaires."

In a notice published on its website, Fusong County ordered the Changbaishan International Tourism Resort to shut down its golf courses. It did not give a reason for the closure.

The statement said the order came on September 9, but was only published on the county government's website last Friday.

The Changbaishan resort is owned by the Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese real estate conglomerate founded by billionaire Wang Jianlin. As of Tuesday, Forbes listed Wang as the richest man in China with a net worth of $31.4 billion (£23.7 billion).

The 21 square kilometre resort boasts one 18-hole golf course, one 36-hole golf course, 43 ski slopes, luxury hotels, a tourist town, and ski cabins, Wanda's website said. The golf courses were designed by American golfer Jack Nicklaus and architect Robert Jones. The tourist town has a theatre and hot spring bathhouse, and the hotels include chains from the Park Hyatt, Westin, Sheraton and Holiday Inn.

It's unclear whether these other sections of the resort will also be made to shut down. According to Wanda's website, the Changbaishan resort is one of the real estate group's first forays into national tourism.

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One of the Changbaishan International Resort's golf courses, as seen in the Wanda Group's promotional video. Dalian Wanda Group

Golf has long been regarded unfavourably in China. Mao Zedong, the leader of the country's Communist Party and founding father of the People's Republic of China, banned the sport in 1949 after dismissing it as a "sport for millionaires."

In 2015, President Xi Jinping banned Communist Party officials from playing golf in an effort to crack down on corruption. Golf remains on the list of the party's disciplinary violations and is often cited in corruption cases, Reuters reported.

"Like fine liquor and tobacco, fancy cars, and fancy houses, golf has become a public relations tool that businessmen use to 'hook' officials," the official newspaper of China's anti-corruption agency declared in an April 2015 editorial. "The golf course is gradually turning into a place where they trade money for power."

There is no suggestion that the order to shut down Wang's golf courses is in any way related to corruption. In January, China's state planning commission said it had shut down 111 out of the country's 683 golf courses.

The news of Changbaishan's order to close comes days before China's 19th Communist Party Congress on October 18, a massive meeting for the country's leadership which takes places every five years. Pundits expect President Xi Jinping to further consolidate his power in the upcoming congress.

[GeneChing]

I wonder how this might affect Chinese films showing in select U.S. theaters.


Dalian Wanda Scales Back AMC Investment (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dalian-wanda-scales-back-amc-investment-1143481)
12:15 PM PDT 9/14/2018 by Paul Bond

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Joe Pugliese
Dalian Wanda chairman Wang Jianlin

The company, controlled by billionaire Wang Jianlin, was incentivized to scale down the AMC investment as Chinese regulators have encouraged cutting back on foreign holdings.

AMC Entertainment on Friday said its top investor, Dalian Wanda Group of China, trimmed its exposure to the giant chain of movie theaters while private equity firm Silver Lake made an investment.

Silver Lake's stake comes by way of $600 million in convertible notes at 2.95 percent interest convertible into AMC Class A stock at $20.50. AMC shares traded at $20 on Friday. Later, Silver Lake will appoint managing director Lee Wittlinger to AMC's board.

AMC said it will purchase about 24 million Class B shares from Dalian Wanda at $17.50 apiece, a price that represents a 13 percent discount. When the transaction is complete, Dalian Wanda will own about 38 percent of AMC, down from 60 percent.

Dalian Wanda, controlled by Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin, was incentivized to scale down the AMC investment as Chinese regulators have encouraged companies there to cut back on their foreign holdings.

Dalian Wanda took a majority stake in AMC in 2012 for $2.6 billion, which Reuters said was then the largest overseas acquisition by a privately held Chinese company.

AMC also said Friday it will issue a special dividend of $1.55 per share, though not to Dalian Wanda on the shares it is selling to AMC.

Silver Lake has about $42.5 billion in investments in companies like Alibaba Group, Endeavor, GoDaddy and Cast & Crew.

"We are very excited to welcome a new highly sophisticated investor with a great track record of success,. Silver Lake believes in the inherent value of AMC now, and in the likelihood of AMC’s success going forward," said AMC CEO Adam Aron. "We are also truly pleased that Wanda is continuing with its longstanding commitment to AMC," he added.

[GeneChing]

HOME FILM ASIA OCTOBER 31, 2018 8:19AM PT
China’s Wanda Completes Exit From Film Studios and Theme Parks (https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/wanda-completes-exit-from-film-studios-and-theme-parks-1203015923/)
By PATRICK FRATER
Asia Bureau Chief

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CREDIT: WU HONG/EPA-EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Dalian Wanda has completed its exit from the domestic Chinese theme park business by selling its parks management companies to property developer Sunac for $900 million (RMB6.28 billion). The deal includes operations managing the massive film and TV studios that Wanda constructed in Qingdao and 13 the.

The sale of Wanda Cultural Management comes less than three years after Wanda’s chairman Wang Jianlin warned Disney that it would launch a pack of Chinese tigers to defeat Shanghai Disneyland. And it comes barely a year after Wanda sold its theme park businesses and part of its hotel portfolio as part of a massive debt-reduction program.

Sunac last year paid RMB44 billion ($6.31 billion at current exchange rates) to buy the parks and studios. But it left operational control with Wanda Cultural Management.

“The transaction will further clarify the operation management aspect of the cultural and tourism projects acquired by the group and further improve our management efficiency,” Sunac said in a regulatory filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Sunac now has the right to rebrand the parks and studios.

Wanda has been forced into retreat across many of its business sectors. It was recently announced that U.S. finance firm Silverlake was to buy a substantial portion of Wanda’s stake in U.S. movie theater group AMC. It has also been reported that Wanda is negotiating to sell its stake in Legendary Entertainment, the Hollywood producer that it bought in 2016 for up to $3.5 billion.

THREADS
Wanda & AMC (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69324-Wanda-amp-AMC)
Chinese Theme Parks (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?62642-Chinese-Theme-Parks)