A sign for the Dalian Wanda Oriental Movie Metropolis film production
hub stands on a hill in this aerial photograph taken in Qingdao, China,
on April 17, 2018.
Four gigantic, Chinese characters are aligned on a hill overlooking a seaside film studio complex, in a nod to the fabled Hollywood sign, the American cultural icon in Los Angeles.
Except this is northern China's port city of Qingdao, where Dalian Wanda Group, a real-estate, retail and entertainment conglomerate, is opening its doors to an audacious $7.9 billion (50 billion yuan) world-class film production hub, called the Oriental Movie Metropolis, or Dong Fang Ying Du.
The project boasts the world's largest studios, a commercial complex covered with giant portraits of Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Bruce Lee. There's also a reclaimed island full of hotels, condos, two theaters and a yacht club.
It all adds up to China's largest and glitziest effort yet to attract Hollywood filmmakers to work their magic using domestic film-production studios -- the sort of move that can enhance the nation's "soft power" and cultural reach on the global stage.
The studios have been partially open since the second half of 2016 and have hosted the production of 10 films. Other than Wanda's Legendary Entertainment, no big Hollywood studio has produced a movie in Qingdao. Most of the productions have been Chinese films, albeit some of them with big budgets, such as "Feng Shen," a 3 billion yuan trilogy based on an ancient Chinese mythological novel.
The entire complex spans an area of 929 acres (376 hectares), according to a Wanda statement in 2013, when the project broke ground with Hollywood glitterati such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Nicole Kidman and now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.
Four gigantic, Chinese characters are aligned on a hill overlooking a seaside film studio complex, in a nod to the fabled Hollywood sign, the American cultural icon in Los Angeles.
Except this is northern China's port city of Qingdao, where Dalian Wanda Group, a real-estate, retail and entertainment conglomerate, is opening its doors to an audacious $7.9 billion (50 billion yuan) world-class film production hub, called the Oriental Movie Metropolis, or Dong Fang Ying Du.
The project boasts the world's largest studios, a commercial complex covered with giant portraits of Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Bruce Lee. There's also a reclaimed island full of hotels, condos, two theaters and a yacht club.
It all adds up to China's largest and glitziest effort yet to attract Hollywood filmmakers to work their magic using domestic film-production studios -- the sort of move that can enhance the nation's "soft power" and cultural reach on the global stage.
The studios have been partially open since the second half of 2016 and have hosted the production of 10 films. Other than Wanda's Legendary Entertainment, no big Hollywood studio has produced a movie in Qingdao. Most of the productions have been Chinese films, albeit some of them with big budgets, such as "Feng Shen," a 3 billion yuan trilogy based on an ancient Chinese mythological novel.
The entire complex spans an area of 929 acres (376 hectares), according to a Wanda statement in 2013, when the project broke ground with Hollywood glitterati such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Nicole Kidman and now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.
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