Talking Entertainment: Wanda Builds Huge Universal Style Studio and Design Week Tips

Nick Richards | Sep 27, 2013 2:27 pm | 1 comment | 1556 reads

An USD 8.2 billion investment plan was unveiled last week to turn China's movie industry into the largest in the world. Wanda group, steered by the very wealthy chairman Wang Jianlin, is hoping to see this plan through in five years with the opening of a Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis in 2017. Hollywood heavy hitters the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman showed up for the announcment to express their support for the project.

A 10,000 square-meter film studio and Universal Studios style theme park are part of the proposed development and contracts have been signed to produce 30 foreign and 100 local films at the site every year. An agreement has also been reached with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to hold a Qingdao International Film Festival every September starting from 2016.

This would be one of the largest festivals of its kind in the world, but is still pending government approval. According to The Hollywood Reporter Wang stated that, "The future of the world’s film industry is in China because we have 1.3 billion people, and we will have the biggest film business in the world by 2018."

On the local front, Beijing Design Week has finally kicked off with a series of openings. The neighborhoods of 751, Dashilar and Caochangdi will be alive with art and design over the next seven days and are definitely worth touring.

While the exhibitions number in the 100s and are far too numerous to list, these areas will no doubt be fully prepped for visitors and should be easy enough to navigate. Guidebooks and maps will also be available at the sites.

We''ll be doing some ongoing coverage of the specifics, some of which is linked below, and Mask9 has developed a pretty good bilingual listing of over 80 specific events which is also worth a look.

Lastly, the star of Beijing Design Week 2013, Rubber Duck, has now been moved to Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace. If you weren't keen to trek all the way out to the Garden Expo and fork out RMB 100 to see it, now's your chance to get a glimpse of the novelty in a more accessible location.

Beijing Design Week on the blog: