Wanda Group (Chinese: 万达集团; pinyin: Wàndá Jítuán), or the Dalian Wanda Group (大连万达), is a Chinese multinational conglomerate founded in Dalian, Liaoning and headquartered in Beijing. It is a private property developer and owner of Wanda Cinemas and the Hoyts Group, as well as a minority shareholder of AMC Theatres. With investments within Mainland China and globally, the Dalian Wanda Group has investments across many industries including construction, entertainment, media, industrial manufacturing, financial services, high technology, hospitality, real estate, retail, healthcare, and sports. Wanda Cultural Industry Group is, therefore, one of the most recognized Chinese cultural enterprises, includes movie theatres, sports and film production assets, and has a contribution of 28% or $10.85 billion to the overall revenue.
The Consortium of Wanda-Legendary
Chinese real estate and investment conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group acquired Legendary Entertainment in a deal valued at $3.5 billion on 11 Jan 2016. The agreement marked the first time that a movie studio capable of producing big-budget global blockbuster hits, such as ‘Godzilla’, ‘Inception’, ‘Jurassic World’ and ‘Pacific Rim’, is coming under Chinese ownership. It is also the largest cross-border entertainment acquisition by a Chinese company to date.
This Wanda-legendary amalgamation has brought immense benefits for both the companies, as they got to combine their cross-media expertise. A Wanda-owned Legendary has been able to hatch China-U.S. co-productions that avoid China’s import quota restrictions, and structure co-financing deals. New management at Legendary Entertainment has helped make up for its financial restraints and boosted its pipeline of TV and film content. Wanda has also taken responsibility for financial sponsorship to back up every Legendary Production. With a majority interest in Legendary, Wanda has acquired the capacity to produce content in, and for, the U.S. and China. At the same time, ongoing ownership of Wanda Cinemas and AMC Entertainment has expectedly helped augment this production capacity with a parallel theatrical exhibition reach.
Wanda continues to expand its cinema operations outside China, while collaborating its already owned assets with legendary, to sponsor its film production division. In 2015, Wanda paid over $600 million for Hoyts, Australia’s number two multiplex chain, and it was rumoured to have toyed with buying the pan-European UCI chain. The further organizational change involved creating three branches, commercial properties, finance and culture. Of these, culture has the most subsidiaries, spanning theme parks, the massive Qingdao Studios on China’s East coast, Sunseeker Yachts, and Wanda’s $2 billion, 2015 purchases of sports rights groups Infront and World Triathlon.
Legendary, with its branded content and Hollywood prestige, offers Wanda’s owner, Wang Jianlin, the potential to further push Wanda’s vertical and horizontal integration. Legendary’s properties lend themselves well to exploitation as theme parks and mall rides. The Qingdao Studio facility has expectedly become Legendary’s default shooting location, while Wanda’s anticipated growth in e-commerce and streaming video has benefited from Legendary as a provider of exclusive content.
Chinese real estate and investment conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group acquired Legendary Entertainment in a deal valued at $3.5 billion on 11 Jan 2016. The agreement marked the first time that a movie studio capable of producing big-budget global blockbuster hits, such as ‘Godzilla’, ‘Inception’, ‘Jurassic World’ and ‘Pacific Rim’, is coming under Chinese ownership. It is also the largest cross-border entertainment acquisition by a Chinese company to date.
This Wanda-legendary amalgamation has brought immense benefits for both the companies, as they got to combine their cross-media expertise. A Wanda-owned Legendary has been able to hatch China-U.S. co-productions that avoid China’s import quota restrictions, and structure co-financing deals. New management at Legendary Entertainment has helped make up for its financial restraints and boosted its pipeline of TV and film content. Wanda has also taken responsibility for financial sponsorship to back up every Legendary Production. With a majority interest in Legendary, Wanda has acquired the capacity to produce content in, and for, the U.S. and China. At the same time, ongoing ownership of Wanda Cinemas and AMC Entertainment has expectedly helped augment this production capacity with a parallel theatrical exhibition reach. Wanda continues to expand its cinema operations outside China, while collaborating its already owned assets with legendary, to sponsor its film production division. In 2015, Wanda paid over $600 million for Hoyts, Australia’s number two multiplex chain, and it was rumoured to have toyed with buying the pan-European UCI chain. The further organizational change involved creating three branches, commercial properties, finance and culture. Of these, culture has the most subsidiaries, spanning theme parks, the massive Qingdao Studios on China’s East coast, Sunseeker Yachts, and Wanda’s $2 billion, 2015 purchases of sports rights groups Infront and World Triathlon.
Legendary, with its branded content and Hollywood prestige, offers Wanda’s owner, Wang Jianlin, the potential to further push Wanda’s vertical and horizontal integration. Legendary’s properties lend themselves well to exploitation as theme parks and mall rides. The Qingdao Studio facility has expectedly become Legendary’s default shooting location, while Wanda’s anticipated growth in e-commerce and streaming video has benefited from Legendary as a provider of exclusive content.
Comments
Post a Comment