Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group Co (萬達集團) has closed a movie leisure complex “for renovation” only 19 months after it went into operation, it said yesterday, dealing a blow to the company’s diversification plans shortly after opening its first theme park.
The entertainment facility in Wuhan, launched in December 2014 and reportedly costing 3.8 billion yuan (US$570 million at current exchange rates), was shut down on Sunday, the Wanda subsidiary that runs it said in a statement sent to reporters.
It will be “comprehensively upgraded and renovated” to improve services before reopening, the company said, without giving a date.
The complex was receiving “far fewer” daily visitors than the 800 to 1,000 originally expected, the local Chutian Metropolis newspaper said on Monday, with tourists complaining that they had to line up for hours for each attraction.
Wanda denied the report.
Owned by billionaire Wang
Jianlin (王健林), Wanda is seeking to shift its focus from property to services and entertainment as profits wane in the real-estate sector in China.
“The era where you can make money easily is gone. This is our judgement about the long-term trend in the real estate sector,” Wang said in a speech last year.
In May the group launched operations at its first theme park, a US$3.4 billion project in Nanchang, just weeks before US entertainment giant Disney opened a park in Shanghai, its first in mainland China.
Wanda has also has expanded aggressively overseas, snapping up a string of assets in Europe and the US in recent years.
It bought Hollywood studio Legendary Entertainment in a US$3.5 billion deal, after purchasing US cinema chain AMC Entertainment for US$2.6 billion.
It has also announced a deal to buy the London-based Odeon & UCI cinema group, and is bidding for US movie house chain Carmike.
In related news, Wanda Cinema Line Co yesterday fell 1.2 percent in Shenzhen, China, after Dalian Wanda Group Co shelved a US$5.6 billion reorganization plan for its entertainment assets.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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