SEOUL-- Korea's Showbox has announced that it will close its production shingle Motion101.

The shingle was established in August 2006 by Mediaplex, at the time Korea's largest movie conglom, in a move to boost in-house production capacity. Mediaplex owned distribution company Showbox and Korea's largest multiplex chain Megabox, though last year sold the Megabox theaters to Australian financial consortium Macquarrie.

Mediaplex provided 80% of the initial $2.6 million capital for Motion 101 through its subsid Showbox and teamed up with stock market-listed IT company Innet, which put the rest of the start up coin.

Since then Motion101 has been developing helmer Park Kwang-hyun ("Welcome To Dongmakgol")'s new project "Fist", a $ 15 million budget sci-fi action drama. But there have been internal disagreements with in Mediaplex concerning support for the title.

The sudden closure decision has shocked the Korean industry. Only last month Motion101 announced that it was developing a dance movie with JYP, a renowned music producer and composer who made and promoted the Korean Wave superstar Rain.

Sources at Motion101 said only that the company would be closed at the end of this month and offered no explanation for the decision. Industry observers suppose that closure was a step by Mediaplex's parent company Orion Group to reduce its losses from the entertainment business sector.

Innet plunged into film industry in 2006 acquiring shares of CINELINE2, which produced "Marathon" and "My Father". But early this year, Innet withdrew from the market due to the reversal of the industry's fortunes and separated from CINELINE2.

© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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