Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group makes speech at the opening ceremony. Photo: courtesy of Dalian Wanda Group

 

The chairman and founder of Dalian Wanda Group has vowed to transform a port city in East China's Shandong Province into a global film production hub, after the group on Saturday unveiled a movie complex there after more than four years of construction.

With an investment of 50 billion yuan ($7.9 billion), the complex, spanning 166 hectares and named "Qingdao Movie Metropolis," is located in Qingdao, a port city along the coast of Shandong.

As the group is expected to host more than 500 movie and television production companies within just three years in the complex, and as there is expected to be approximately 100 movie and television works produced there every year, the hub has been described as ''the East's answer to Hollywood.“

The group has said that the production zone will boast 52 high-tech studios, including the world's only integrated outdoor and indoor underwater studio.

"We will boost the Chinese movie industry on the world stage,” billionaire Wang Jianlian, Wanda's founder and chairman, said at the project's opening ceremony on Saturday. "We plan to build Qingdao into a global film hub,“ he added. 

The Qingdao film hub is the first cultural and tourism complex that has opened after the group sold majority stakes of its 13 cultural and tourism projects to rival developer Sunac China Holdings in July 2017. The Qingdao film hub is among those 13 projects. 

According to Wanda, the Qingdao Movie Metropolis is supported by dedicated funds, including a 5 billion yuan movie and television development fund, 50:50 funded by the Qingdao city government and Qingdao West Coast New Area, Wanda Group and Sunac China, which offers a 20-40 percent production subsidy to qualifying productions; and a fund established by the Qingdao municipal government which offers a maximum of a 10 percent subsidy to movie companies registered and operating into the facility. 

Although Sun Hongbin, chairman of Sunac China, did not make a speech at the opening ceremony on Saturday, Sunac China says that it hopes to focus more on the cultural and tourism sector in the future. In March, Sunac China also said that the cultural and tourism sector will be a new growing force for the group.