China's Dalian Wanda Group empire has Disney in sights

Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group and one of the richest man on the mainland, is positioning his entertainment empire as a challenger to global leader Disney.

His company opened two major entertainment projects, The Han Show and Wanda Movie Park, in the downtown area of Wuhan , capital city of Hubei province, yesterday as the nation's largest commercial property developer shifted its focus to entertainment, culture and tourism.

"We'd like to make our projects into a new symbol of Chinese culture and even a new global entertainment brand," said Wang.

The Han Show, which is staged in a red lantern-shaped theatre designed by British architect Mark Fisher, combines aerial and aquatic stage performances directed by Franco Dragone, the mastermind behind such shows as The House of Dancing Water in Macau and Le Rêve ( The Dream) in Las Vegas.

Wanda Movie Park, housed in a wind-chime shaped, gold-coloured building also designed by Fisher, describes itself as the world's only indoor movie-theme park. Its 100,000 square metres host six hi-tech attractions and world-class film-watching facilities such as the "largest three-dimensional column soft screen" and the world's first "3D interactive filming" equipment.

Wanda invested 7 billion yuan (HK$8.8 billion) in the two projects and expects them to generate 1.5 to 2 billion yuan of revenue a year.