- Keeping up a push by Chinese firms into Hollywood, China's richest man says he has two billion-dollar deals in the pipeline and an eye beyond that to taking over one of the industry's Big Six.
- Wang Jianlin, of Dalian Wanda Group, tells Reuters that after acquiring a pair of non-production companies, he'd like to take over one of the major studios: Twentieth Century Fox (FOX, FOXA), Warner Brothers (NYSE:TWX), Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS), Universal Pictures (NASDAQ:CMCSA) and Columbia (NYSE:SNE), along with Paramount (VIA, VIAB), for which Wanda was said to be nearing a $4B purchase of 49%.
- Paramount is certainly in play, with flagging performance and a parent (Viacom) struggling with that and its TV business. But that's not all Wang has his eye on: "We are interested not only in Paramount, but all of them. If one of the Big Six would be willing to be sold to us, we would be interested."
- That's a "necessary step" to building a "real movie empire," Wang says. "Only the six are real global film companies, while the rest are not."
- Wanda bought control of production company Legendary Entertainment for $3.5B this year and wants to triple revenue from its cultural division to 150B yuan ($22.6B) by 2020.
- The conglomerate also controls theater firm AMC Entertainment, and with the completion of acquisitions of Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group and Carmike Cinemas, would control 15% of global box office revenues.