Hollywood stars help China property mogul unveil €6bn film park plan

China’s richest man, property developer Wang Jianlin, raised the curtain on a planned 50bn yuan (€6bn) “motion- picture city” which he described as the biggest-ever single investment in the movie and television industry.

The 58-year-old founder of Dalian Wanda Group was surrounded by Hollywood stars John Travolta, Nicole Kidman, and Catherine Zeta-Jones yesterday as he launched his most ambitious project yet in the picturesque coastal city of Qingdao.

When completed in 2017, the Oriental Movie Metropolis will boast 20 sound stages, including the world’s first underwater studio, a convention and exhibition complex, a sprawling shopping mall with an indoor amusement park and seven resort hotels.

The project also will include a yacht club with 300 berths.

“The Oriental Movie Metropolis is a major step in China’s strategy to become a global cultural powerhouse,” Wang said. It was not only crucial to the development of Wanda’s entertainment business, he added, but also an important step for building China’s cultural brand.

For Wang, who was named by Forbes as China’s richest man with personal wealth of $14bn (€10.3bn), the Qingdao project also represents the latest move by Wanda Group to parlay its real estate and shopping mall development into a leisure and entertainment empire.

Wanda Group, which is privately held, has invested in 72 Wanda Plazas across China, along with 40 five-star hotels. The company also owns 6,000 movie screens, 62 department stores, and 68 karaoke centres.

More recently, the company has turned to offshore markets to expand its real estate and leisure investment. Last year, Wanda closed its $2.6bn buy-out of US cinema chain AMC Entertainment. Wang this year also announced a £1bn (€1.1bn) British investment that included the purchase of Sunseeker, Britain’s largest luxury yacht maker by sales.

The Wanda chairman said earlier this month he could afford to spend as much as $5bn every year to buy foreign firms or assets.

Yesterday, Wang said he expected Wanda Group revenue to increase to $30bn this year, and to continue to increase by $10bn every year.

Wanda Group says it has total assets of 300bn yuan and annual revenue for 2012 of 141.7bn yuan.

“We will have more than $50bn in revenue two years from now,” he said. “In 2020, we will have at least $100bn, even by conservative estimates.”

Offshore hotel investment is a major focus of the company’s strategy.