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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...e/news-story/b35b19ebb528a79e9e9a1d81c10572fb
Star attraction: Wanda Group’s Wang Jianlin with performers at Wanda Culture Tourism City in Hefei
Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin visited Shanghai Disneyland last year to see for himself attractions drawn from the Disney catalogue, from Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean to Snow White and the other fairytale princesses.
Wang, whose competing theme parks lean towards stomach-churning thrill rides, had voiced contempt for Disney’s bringing its brand of Americana to China. “One tiger is no match for a pack of wolves,” he said in a 2016 TV interview.
He described plans to build as many as 20 theme parks in China in a growing showbiz empire that included AMC Entertainment and Legendary Entertainment, a Hollywood production and finance company.
Yet attendance at the theme parks Wang built so far has been disappointing. The visit to Shanghai Disney revealed what his parks lacked, one of Wang’s executives said — a fantasy world where visitors were immersed in familiar stories with popular characters.
This month Wang’s Dalian Wanda Group announced plans to sell most of its theme-park properties for more than $US13 billion ($16.5bn), including debt. Wang, 62, is preparing for an IPO of his property business in China but has yet to receive regulatory approval, prompting him to reduce debt and raise cash.
While Hollywood has become reliant on Chinese investors and marketing partners to make movies and sell tickets to the world’s second-largest audience, China hasn’t produced any global blockbuster films or characters. Government officials want China to compete with the US as the world’s storyteller.
Another quiet day at the Dalian Wanda theme park.
Wang’s retreat reflects the challenge of rising to show-business superpower. China has yet to field companies with the talent to compete with Hollywood’s movie and TV studios. American box-office success follows a century of filmmaking, which Disney and Universal Studios have parlayed into global theme-park empires.
“It takes time for a company to build intellectual property,” says Dennis Speigel, who heads a theme-park consulting firm in the US and has visited two Wanda-owned parks. “You need story, movies, publishing and TV to support it.”
As Disney has shown, theme parks can promote content — with movies based on rides, rides based on movies and popular toys based on all of it.
The late Walt Disney built Disneyland in the 1950s with the help of movie studio workers skilled in the arts of storytelling and illusion. Wanda, one of China’s largest commercial property developers, tried to elbow its way into the business without that background.
Last week at a Wanda-owned park in Nanchang, fewer than 3000 people roamed the property, which can accommodate 40,000 visitors, according to attendance records seen by The Wall Street Journal.
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At Wanda’s theme park in Hefei at least half of its 25 attractions were closed on a visit in January. Guests were told it was too cold to run the large rollercoasters. A park hotel was closed for maintenance, even though it had accepted room reservations days earlier. Souvenir shop shelves were nearly empty. Park visitor Li Chunhong said there was nothing her young daughter wanted to buy, which wasn’t a problem during their visit to Shanghai Disneyland.
“My daughter immediately wanted to buy Minnie Mouse, ” Li said. “She wants to be Minnie.”
Wanda’s move into theme parks was part of a broader shift into entertainment that began with its building of Chinese cinemas more than a decade ago. In 2012, Wanda bought AMC for $US2.6bn, and through acquisitions became the world’s largest cinema chain. The company’s other forays into entertainment have yet to strike gold. The $US3.5bn Wanda paid for Legendary last year was widely seen in Hollywood as too much.
With its growing middle class, China is expected to surpass the US in theme park revenue in 2019, according to data provider Euromonitor. Shanghai Disneyland drew more than 11 million visitors in the 12 months beginning in June 2016, its first year, and US-based Universal Parks and Resorts and Six Flags Entertainment both plan to open parks in China.
Wang saw theme parks as a way to promote China’s history and legends. This aligned with China’s Communist Party, which seeks a larger role for the country in promoting global popular culture. “He fundamentally feels there is so much story and so much depth to the history of China” that can be turned into attractions, a former Wanda executive says.
Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck at Tokyo Disneyland.
Yet Wang’s management team approached the design and operation of its theme parks as property developers rather than storytellers. The focus on the technical aspects of Wanda’s theme parks mirrored the company’s approach to building shopping centres and office towers, according to the former Wanda executive. The Wanda Movie Park in Wuhan, the former executive says, was built in the same by-the-book style Wang used for commercial construction, including penalties for missing even the smallest deadlines.
The park was aimed at thrillseeking young adults, the former executive says, built around motion-simulation rides — dubbed by some in the business as “motion-sickness” rides. But most of the rides didn’t appeal to families with young children, who tend to spend more on food and souvenirs.
“By the end, they resorted to heavy discounting to get people into the park,” the former executive says. “They didn’t have the understanding that the business can’t rely on heavily discounted tickets to get attendance, because this just means there is something fundamentally wrong, and you have to fix what’s fundamentally wrong.”
The $US510 million Wuhan park, which isn’t included in the theme-park sale, closed for retooling after 19 months in operation and has not reopened.
Star attraction: Wanda Group’s Wang Jianlin with performers at Wanda Culture Tourism City in Hefei
Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin visited Shanghai Disneyland last year to see for himself attractions drawn from the Disney catalogue, from Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean to Snow White and the other fairytale princesses.
Wang, whose competing theme parks lean towards stomach-churning thrill rides, had voiced contempt for Disney’s bringing its brand of Americana to China. “One tiger is no match for a pack of wolves,” he said in a 2016 TV interview.
He described plans to build as many as 20 theme parks in China in a growing showbiz empire that included AMC Entertainment and Legendary Entertainment, a Hollywood production and finance company.
Yet attendance at the theme parks Wang built so far has been disappointing. The visit to Shanghai Disney revealed what his parks lacked, one of Wang’s executives said — a fantasy world where visitors were immersed in familiar stories with popular characters.
This month Wang’s Dalian Wanda Group announced plans to sell most of its theme-park properties for more than $US13 billion ($16.5bn), including debt. Wang, 62, is preparing for an IPO of his property business in China but has yet to receive regulatory approval, prompting him to reduce debt and raise cash.
While Hollywood has become reliant on Chinese investors and marketing partners to make movies and sell tickets to the world’s second-largest audience, China hasn’t produced any global blockbuster films or characters. Government officials want China to compete with the US as the world’s storyteller.
Another quiet day at the Dalian Wanda theme park.
Wang’s retreat reflects the challenge of rising to show-business superpower. China has yet to field companies with the talent to compete with Hollywood’s movie and TV studios. American box-office success follows a century of filmmaking, which Disney and Universal Studios have parlayed into global theme-park empires.
“It takes time for a company to build intellectual property,” says Dennis Speigel, who heads a theme-park consulting firm in the US and has visited two Wanda-owned parks. “You need story, movies, publishing and TV to support it.”
As Disney has shown, theme parks can promote content — with movies based on rides, rides based on movies and popular toys based on all of it.
The late Walt Disney built Disneyland in the 1950s with the help of movie studio workers skilled in the arts of storytelling and illusion. Wanda, one of China’s largest commercial property developers, tried to elbow its way into the business without that background.
Last week at a Wanda-owned park in Nanchang, fewer than 3000 people roamed the property, which can accommodate 40,000 visitors, according to attendance records seen by The Wall Street Journal.
Made with
LEARN MORE
At Wanda’s theme park in Hefei at least half of its 25 attractions were closed on a visit in January. Guests were told it was too cold to run the large rollercoasters. A park hotel was closed for maintenance, even though it had accepted room reservations days earlier. Souvenir shop shelves were nearly empty. Park visitor Li Chunhong said there was nothing her young daughter wanted to buy, which wasn’t a problem during their visit to Shanghai Disneyland.
“My daughter immediately wanted to buy Minnie Mouse, ” Li said. “She wants to be Minnie.”
Wanda’s move into theme parks was part of a broader shift into entertainment that began with its building of Chinese cinemas more than a decade ago. In 2012, Wanda bought AMC for $US2.6bn, and through acquisitions became the world’s largest cinema chain. The company’s other forays into entertainment have yet to strike gold. The $US3.5bn Wanda paid for Legendary last year was widely seen in Hollywood as too much.
With its growing middle class, China is expected to surpass the US in theme park revenue in 2019, according to data provider Euromonitor. Shanghai Disneyland drew more than 11 million visitors in the 12 months beginning in June 2016, its first year, and US-based Universal Parks and Resorts and Six Flags Entertainment both plan to open parks in China.
Wang saw theme parks as a way to promote China’s history and legends. This aligned with China’s Communist Party, which seeks a larger role for the country in promoting global popular culture. “He fundamentally feels there is so much story and so much depth to the history of China” that can be turned into attractions, a former Wanda executive says.
Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck at Tokyo Disneyland.
Yet Wang’s management team approached the design and operation of its theme parks as property developers rather than storytellers. The focus on the technical aspects of Wanda’s theme parks mirrored the company’s approach to building shopping centres and office towers, according to the former Wanda executive. The Wanda Movie Park in Wuhan, the former executive says, was built in the same by-the-book style Wang used for commercial construction, including penalties for missing even the smallest deadlines.
The park was aimed at thrillseeking young adults, the former executive says, built around motion-simulation rides — dubbed by some in the business as “motion-sickness” rides. But most of the rides didn’t appeal to families with young children, who tend to spend more on food and souvenirs.
“By the end, they resorted to heavy discounting to get people into the park,” the former executive says. “They didn’t have the understanding that the business can’t rely on heavily discounted tickets to get attendance, because this just means there is something fundamentally wrong, and you have to fix what’s fundamentally wrong.”
The $US510 million Wuhan park, which isn’t included in the theme-park sale, closed for retooling after 19 months in operation and has not reopened.
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