Wang Jianlin, the billionaire boss of China’s Dalian Wanda Group, said on Saturday he will turn the northern port city of Qingdao into a global film production hub as he launched a sprawling studio complex in a ceremony attended by hundreds.
Covering an area equivalent to more than 200 football pitches, the 400-acre Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis boasts the world’s biggest movie studio and has been touted as China’s answer to Hollywood.
The $8 billion project, built partly on an artificial island, also includes hotels, a theme park and a yacht club.
Wang, whose group controls U.S. cinema chain AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc and U.S. studio Legendary Entertainment, promised generous subsidies for film makers but indicated a focus on China’s domestic film market.
“We will boost the Chinese movie industry development,” Wang said at the project’s opening ceremony.
“We will also turn Qingdao into a global hub for film,” he said, making no reference to Hollywood in his brief speech.
Hundreds of Chinese film industry representatives attended, as well as Hollywood executives and Chinese government officials that included the vice governor of Shandong province.
The launch came as the mutual courtship between China and Hollywood looks less rosy.
A handful of U.S.-China film ventures have fallen apart due to cultural clashes. Financing deals – including Wanda’s $1 billion wooing of Hollywood studio Dick Clark Productions Inc – have also collapsed. Hollywood’s share of the Chinese market has lost ground to a surge of popular and sometimes patriotic-minded Chinese films.
So far, no major American movie has been produced at Oriental, which partially opened in 2016, except Legendary Entertainment’s “Pacific Rim: Uprising” and “Great Wall”.
