The Great Wall (Photo : China.org)
Legendary Entertainment and the Dalian Wanda Group signed on Tuesday in Beijing the sale of Legendary to Dalian for $3.5 billion. The deal makes cinema history by being the biggest cross-border entertainment buy-in by a Chinese company.
Legendary is the movie studio involved in the production of blockbuster movies such as "Godzilla," "Inception," "Jurassic World" and "Pacific Rim." With the 100 percent acquisition, Wanda will become the highest revenue-generating film company in the world, says Wong Jialin, chairman of Wanda, reports Hollywood Reporter.
Wanda would reincorporate the film company based on U.S. and China tax structures. Thomas Tull, founder and CEO of Legendary, keeps his role as responsible for the day-to-day operations of the studio. His pay incentive is linked to the company's performance.
The unusually complicated transaction involving the acquisition would close by the first quarter of 2016, discloses Marty Willhite, chief operating officer of Legendary. Tull adds that the two companies would create a brand new international entertainment company to meet the growing demand for quality movies globally, especially for the Chinese audience.
In August 2012, Wanda moved closer to becoming an entertainment company from a real estate firm by buying for $2.6 billion AMC Entertainment, the second-biggest multiplex chain in Australia. It is also owner of China-based Wanda Cinema Line, the biggest domestic exhibition circuit in the Asian giant.
Prior to its acquisition of Legendary, Wanda appointed in 2015 Jack Gao, a former executive at Microsoft and News Cor., to lead the revamped film outfit which includes Cinema Line, Wanda Pictures and Wuzhou Film Distribution.
Wanda is in the construction phase of an $8.2-billion studio complex at Qingdao, a port city in China, which it claims would become the biggest movie production facility in the world. In 2017, the firm would build first 30 soundstages, hi-tech postproduction facilities, backlots, a water tank and an underwater stage.
Their first movie would be "The Great Wall," which would star Matt Damon, Chinese actor Andy Lau, Willem Dafoe and Pedro Rascal. It is a 3D sci-fi fantasy set in China, reports The Wall Street Journal.
