A recently opened Wanda Group theme park in Nanchang City used Disney’s most beloved characters to dethrone the world’s biggest tourism operator, sparking outrage from the American company.
The anti-Disney theme park in China located close to the soon-to-be-opened Shanghai Disneyland used a dirty trick to gain more visitors during its opening weekend, the Los Angeles Times reported.
As expected, Walt Disney Co. was outraged by the move, expressing their disappointment at the Dalian Wanda Group Co. owned by China's richest man, Wang Jianlin.
Prior to the inauguration of the Wanda theme park in Nanchang, Wang made strong statements against Disney and vowed to make their first-ever Disneyland theme park in China to be unprofitable for the next decade, Fortune noted.
Disney's Reaction
Because of this comment and the recent infringement move, Disney vowed to get back at Wanda.
"We vigorously protect our intellectual property and will take action to address infringement," Disney told Bloomberg News. "Our characters and stories have delighted generations, these illegal and substandard imitations unfortunately disappoint all who expect more."
"We are perplexed that [Wanda Chief Executive Wang Jianlin] would choose to do public battle with us, or attempt to undermine our business in any way," the firm added in a statement to LA Times on Monday.
Shanghai-based law firm Via Law Corp. believes that there are grounds for legal action from Disney's in this situation.
"There's more than a passing similarity between the costumes seen at Wanda's park and designs registered by Disney," explained Wang Yingyu, the law firm's director.
"Legally, the bottom line is that the owner of a space is responsible for infringement that has occurred, unless they argue that they cannot exercise control over their tenants--which would require thorough proof that they have done all they can to control the situation," he added.
Disney Characters in Wanda City
Last week, Wanda's CEO and China's wealthiest man said that the country should really reconsider their patronage on the Western culture particularly when it comes to Disney.
"The frenzy of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and the era of blindly following them have passed," Fortune quoted him as saying in a CCTV interview prior to the opening of his company's series of theme parks.
On Saturday, Wang graced the opening of the theme park in Nanchang known as "Wanda City," where some guests saw Marvel's Captain America, Snow White, and a Stormtrooper from Star Wars lurking around the area.
According to Fortune, Wanda invested a hefty $3.5 billion into the project in order to build an aquarium, a number of resorts and hotels, an indoor movie theme park, an outdoor amusement park with three roller coasters, and a shopping mall.
The outlet said that Captain America and Snow White were spotted floating around the mall for picture taking, while the "poorly costumed" Stormtrooper stood by the in-park cinema.
In their defense, Wanda told Bloomberg that the non-Wanda characters were initiated by the store operators inside the mall and not the theme park's management.
"The non-Wanda characters were operated by individual stores within Wanda Mall. They do not represent Wanda," the Chinese company said on Sunday.