China's Wanda Group announced that it will partner with Sony Pictures on film production a couple of days after the plans to invest in Paramount Pictures. This deal may be a result that should be called a "sorry award" for Wanda aiming for "Disney in China".
Paramount, one of Hollywood's six biggest film enterprises, announced its intention to sell stock earlier this year, and Wanda had a strong desire to invest. However, Paramount froze a share sale plan at the end of internal conflict. It was disappointing for Wanda.
And on September 23, Wanda announced that it had signed a strategic alliance to invest in Sony's movies. However, the content is "co-production" of common movies between Hollywood and Chinese companies, not capital alliance. According to the report, Wanda will make a capital investment up to 10% for alliance work. In other words, Sony holds control of the work, and Wanda's role is limited to a limited extent.
Wanda last year bought Hollywood movie production company Legendary Entertainment for $ 3.5 billion (about 352.2 billion yen). In addition, another American movie theater giant AMC under another umbrella acquired an European movie theater chain Ude Odeon and UCI Cinemas earlier this year, and is also about to acquire the same company's Ka'ijk.
This system was supposed to be a powerful platform for Wanda, but it was a big pain for the company that we could not reinforce the supply system of the main movie work.
Impersonation also in the theme park business
And in the entertainment business of Wanda, becoming the third pillar is the theme park business. Wanda has accelerated the construction of the huge resort "Wanda City" in the past two years. From the opening of Shanghai Disney, we opened a huge facility that invested $ 3.6 billion (about 523.2 billion yen) in Hefei 500 km from Shanghai in just three months. The company plans to construct up to 20 entertainment facilities throughout China by 2020. In this movement, the attitude of Wanda who is faced with Disney pursuit is appearing.
The operation of the movie theater will support the movie business of Wanda at home and abroad, but if the movie does not hit it becomes a risk. And regarding the resort, even if you park in a rural city in China, you do not think you can attract tourists. I am sure that many of Wanda Citi will end up wasting huge amounts of funds.
Paramount has always had entrusted hope to succeed in China. On his 4th ahead of Internet delivery service Jiaflix under the umbrella of Chinese State-owned China movie channel its name to co-producer.