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On October 14, 2023, Legendary Pictures officially announced that it would repurchase the remaining 50% of its equity from Dalian Wanda Group, and the receiver was Apollo Global Management, the world's top private equity company.
After Legendary Pictures "went home", this meant that Wanda's adventure in Hollywood officially came to an end, and Wang Jianlin once again returned to a rational way of doing business.
Looking back on 2016, Wang Jianlin shocked the world with a $3.5 billion "legendary acquisition", which not only allowed Wanda to maintain a leading position in the film industry, but also kicked off Wanda's entry into Hollywood.
The reason why Wang Jianlin attaches great importance to Legendary Pictures is mainly because the film industry is ushering in many development opportunities, especially in its home United States, the film industry is gradually recovering.
However, all of this was full of ups and downs, and Legendary Pictures did not perform well at the box office after that, and even the box office of the big-budget film "The Great Wall" failed to meet expectations, causing Wanda to gradually have reservations about Legendary Pictures.
So now that Legendary Pictures is "going home", why did Wang Jianlin's acquisition change from a legend to "wandering"?
What challenges will Legendary Pictures face?
Legendary Pictures "Come Home".
On October 14, Legendary Pictures officially announced that it would repurchase the remaining 50% of the equity from Dalian Wanda, and the receiver was Apollo Global Management, the world's top private equity company.
And Legendary Pictures' "homecoming" this time is not only an experience of the Hollywood film market, but also a small setback for itself to go abroad.
As for whether the equity repurchase of Dalian Wanda Group will affect the future development of Wanda Group in the film market, it is uncertain.
But what is clear is that after this equity buyback, Wanda will no longer have any shares in Legendary Pictures, which means that Wang Jianlin will completely withdraw from Legendary Pictures, which is also embarrassing.
In 2016, Wang Jianlin bought a 50% stake in Legendary Pictures for $3.5 billion, a news that not only surprised the outside world, but even Wang Jianlin himself said it was an "adventure".
However, this "adventure" kicked off Wanda's entry into Hollywood, and Wang Jianlin once gave the reason behind his "big gamble", which is to build Wanda into a giant in the global film industry.
In fact, Wang Jianlin had this plan before, and in 2012, Wanda Group spent $260 million to control Legendary Pictures, with a shareholding ratio of 49.9%.
This move was also of great strategic significance at the time, but what is embarrassing is that the box office performance of "The Great Wall" did not meet expectations.
In 2016, Wang Jianlin announced that he would acquire the remaining 50% of the shares of Legendary Pictures, which was surprising for a while.
Wang Jianlin's original intention of acquiring Legendary Pictures was to build Wanda into a giant in the global film industry, but Wanda did not focus on the domestic film market, but set its sights on Hollywood, a blockbuster "market blue ocean".
At that time, many people were also very optimistic about Wang Jianlin's decision, thinking that he was "prescient", but they did not expect that Wanda's acquisition had pushed it into the "abyss".
During this period, Wang Jianlin also made some analysis and prediction, believing that Wanda Film's current market share is about 15%, and if it can merge with Hollywood's Dream Factory and Paramount, the market share will rise to 30%.
As Wanda's acquisitions in Hollywood continue to increase, Wang Jianlin has gradually seen a change in Wanda's market share in the film industry.
But what I never expected was that after Wang Jianlin bought Legendary Pictures, it successively filmed a number of big-budget movies with large investment and production, but the box office was not satisfactory.
"Regrettably" the acquisition funds have shrunk.
After Wanda's acquisition of Legendary Pictures, Wang Jianlin also "worked imagination", however, Wanda's acquisition did not bring it considerable economic benefits, but instead made it fall into a state of "burning money".
Wanda's $3.5 billion stake in Legendary Pictures, which Wanda bought at the time, seems a bit expensive in retrospect.
Wang Jianlin also revealed such an idea: "Being able to buy 50% of the equity of Legendary Pictures at a price of more than one billion or billions at every turn, Wang Jianlin said that such a "low price" is not because he overvalued Legendary Pictures, but because Hollywood's Hollywood profits are not high. ”
As a result, although Wanda's investment in Hollywood is high, its box office is not ideal.
This also made Wang Jianlin start to think that Wanda's problems are due to a lack of understanding of consumption in the United States market, or a misreading of the Hollywood film market.
So this acquisition became a burden for the boss, and although Wanda became a shareholder of Legendary Pictures, it was only in name and did not actually participate in the company's operation.
They are not involved in the production and production of Legendary Pictures, which makes them unable to control the quality of the production.
However, the subsequent films produced by Legendary Pictures were all produced in the direction of "localization in the United States", which is not the same thing as Wang Jianlin's original vision of "filling the gap in the Chinese market".
This shows that there is a gap between Wanda and Legendary Pictures, and Wanda, as the controlling party, does not participate in the company's operation and decision-making.
It is also unclear about the production and investment of its films, which leads to the fact that the final box office revenue of this film did not fall to Wanda's side.
Wang Jianlin later said: "My understanding of the Hollywood market is not deep enough, but this has also taught Wanda a profound lesson and made it aware of many problems."
But after the acquisition of Wanda, Legendary Pictures shot a number of films that did not perform well at the box office, and ultimately failed, which invisibly made Wanda's investment fragmented.
Until 2017, director Zhang Yimou's big-budget film "The Great Wall" also failed to meet the expected box office, and the investment and production of the film was as high as $150 million, and the production of this film is Legendary Pictures, it is difficult to escape Wanda's responsibility.
"The Great Wall" was the first film produced by Wang Jianlin after acquiring Legendary Pictures, but it ended in failure.
This also made Wang Jianlin feel the pressure and began to gradually divest his cultural tourism projects in order to get more cash flow.
Wang Jianlin said in 2021: "Wanda is no longer Wanda."
This means that Wanda's main business has changed, no longer focusing on cultural tourism, and Wang Jianlin also told Wanda's employees that there should be a "conversion" between offense and defense.
Wanda's acquisition exposes it to huge financial risks, and at the same time draws a "question mark" on Wang Jianlin's investment.
The future development of Legendary Pictures is yet to be examined.
This time Legendary Pictures "went home" is indeed a little emotional, after all, when he acquired Legendary Pictures, Wang Jianlin was full of confidence, but in the end, he reaped the sorrow.
Legendary Pictures is a well-known Hollywood production company, headquartered in Los Angeles, United States, and is also a production company focusing on fantasy and action films.
Since its inception, Legendary Pictures has carved out a niche in the Hollywood film market with its fantasy and action films.
It is worth mentioning that the "Lord of the Rings" series released in 2000 was produced by Legendary Pictures, and the international box office of this film is as high as 2.9 billion US dollars.
Legendary Pictures was founded in 2000, which can be said to be a very special year, because at this time, the concept of super blockbusters in the industry has not yet appeared, and the establishment of Legendary Pictures has also opened a new era of Hollywood super blockbusters.
However, in 2008, Legendary Pictures experienced the company's bankruptcy, and Legendary Pictures also filed a bankruptcy reorganization application at that time, and this bankruptcy application also led to Wang Jianlin taking a controlling stake.
At that time, Wang Jianlin said: "Legendary Pictures is going downhill."
Although Legendary Pictures has a lot of big-budget films, the big-budget films produced have not brought them corresponding box office revenue.
Although there is a huge amount of financial support, in Wang Jianlin's view, as long as you make high-quality works, you can earn a high box office, but in fact this is not the case, after all, Hollywood's film industry is becoming more and more competitive.
This leads to consumers not having so much spending power, and there are no works that can be affordable to most consumers, so it eventually leads to unsatisfactory box office.
At present, Legendary Pictures has removed the "Wanda" label on its head and ushered in a "new owner".
The choice of story script may also be more "down-to-earth", especially in the Chinese market, which may be more in line with the aesthetics of Chinese consumers.
However, the future development direction of Legendary Pictures is not very clear, after all, Apollo Global Management, as the world's top private equity company, may adopt a different business model after taking over Legendary Pictures, and may also make adjustments according to the background of the times.
On the other hand, Legendary Pictures' next project selection may not be Hollywood-oriented, and may also be tilted towards other countries' markets, so we need to wait and see in the next 3-5 years.
epilogue
Legendary Pictures went home, Wang Jianlin's acquisition became a legend, and now Legendary Pictures has returned to its "hometown", which can be regarded as having a "beginning and an end".
Wang Jianlin also learned a lesson in the process of acquiring Legendary Pictures, and pulled Wanda out of this "gamble" and returned to rationality, after all, Wanda is no longer the original Wanda.
We also look forward to the development of Legendary Pictures under the management of Apollo Global Management, and we also look forward to Wang Jianlin's Wanda Group getting better and better.
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