The Wanda media group, China’s multi-industry conglomerate, has finalized a $1 billion deal to buy Dick Clark Productions, the company announced on Nov. 3.
Dick Clark produces the Golden Globes, the Billboard Music awards, the American Music Awards, Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest, and other events. It is Wanda’s first step into television content.
“Obtaining top television production rights brings about complementary and coordinated development for Wanda’s current focuses on the film, tourism, and sports industries,” the company said.
The Wanda Group crosses four major industrial sectors and had assets of over $80 billion in 2014. The acquisition is part of the Beijing-based conglomerate’s moves to gain a stake in Hollywood, raising concerns about censorship and the growing influence of the communist regime in western media and pop culture.
Epoch Times reported in a feature piece that Hollywood has already been “censoring movies to appease the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in hopes of getting films into the Chinese market,” and that in many cases these films are shown in their politically correct format for non-Chinese audiences.
“The best arts cause us to question, to think,” scholar Ronald J. Rychlak, who writes about disinformation strategy, told Epoch Times. “They motivate us to consider new options, and the communists don’t want that.”
Wanda says in its announcement that Dick Clark’s management will remain unchanged and that a long-term operation target agreement was signed with its executives.
Dalian Wanda Group acquired its first major Hollywood studio early this year when it purchased Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion. This followed its 2012 $2.6 billion purchase of AMC Entertainment Holdings, which runs the second largest cinema chain in the United States.
Wanda also owns Australian movie theater company Hoyts Group, leading European cinema operator Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group, and its China-based Wanda Cinema Line.
(NTD Television)
Featured image: Wang Jianlin (4th R), chairman of Wanda Group and Philippe Blatter (3rd L), president and CEO of sports marketing company Infront, prepare to toast after a signing ceremony in Beijing on February 10, 2015. Credit: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)