The entertainment business is fundamentally about momentum and that is very true in China, too. Who is on the way up, who is the biggest, and who is the brashest all determine who succeeds.
China’s ambitious Dalian Wanda Group, one of the country’s largest entertainment and commercial real estate companies? Fresh on the heels of its September $2.6 billion acquisition of AMC Entertainment, the Beijing-based private company plans to buy a British business early next year (more details to come on whether it will be in entertainment, hotels, or retail). And it may sign an agreement with a Hollywood studio in the first half of 2013.
Wanda already has 5,900 cinema screens in China, all of which are digital, and its Beijing office sits above a Wanda Imax theater. This year China’s box-office take will grow by 30 percent, to about $3 billion, surpassing Japan as the world’s second-largest market. That compares with roughly $10 billion in the U.S.—still by far the world’s largest market, but one that is gradually shrinking, says Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a business consultancy based in Beijing.