Chinese conglomerate buys Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 bln

PanARMENIAN.Net - Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group has acquired Legendary Entertainment, the Hollywood production company behind “The Dark Knight,” “Jurassic World” and “Godzilla” movies, Los Angeles Times reports.

At a signing ceremony in Beijing on Tuesday, January 12 morning, Wanda Chairman Wang Jianlin announced that his company had signed an agreement to buy the Burbank production company for as much as $3.5 billion in cash.

The deal represents the largest acquisition to date of a U.S. production company by a Chinese firm and the latest sign of the deepening ties between Hollywood and the world's most populous country.

Wanda, which began as a commercial real estate firm, has grown into a massive diversified conglomerate in recent years, with holdings including luxury hotels, entertainment companies and e-commerce firms.

The company's subsidiary Wanda Cinema Line is China's biggest cinema chain, with a 14.5% share in the country's burgeoning box office.

Wang, a former military officer, has made other forays into global markets and into the U.S. entertainment industry. In 2012, he acquired AMC Theatres, North America's second-largest cinema chain, for $2.6 billion. A year later, Wanda donated $20 million to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its film museum on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus.

Buying Legendary fits Wanda's goal of creating a global media company and becoming a major player in film production. Wanda is building what it touts as “the world's largest film and television studio” in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao.

The first phase of the studio is scheduled to open in 2017, and the company is seeking to lure both Chinese and international productions to the facility.