SEOUL -- Viacom's subsid, Paramount Licensing Inc. Consumer Products & Recreation Group is to open a theme park in South Korea.
The $1.4 billion Paramount Movie Park Korea is a joint venture with Korea's Daewoo Motor Sales and will be built on reclaimed land near the Incheon international airport west of Seoul. Skedded opening is in 2011.
Movie section of the park will contain activities based on Par properties including Movie "Mission: Impossible", "Tomb Raiders," "The Godfather" and "Titanic."
Three other sections are the Paramount Plaza, an entertainment district integrating the studio's content with shopping and dining; a water park with year-long availability; and Paramount Grand Hotel which consists of two resort hotels.
"Korea is a fast growing attractive market, which holds business-friendly circumstances and high cultural levels. We will combine all of Paramount's Hollywood factors, the characteristics of Korean popular culture, and cutting-edge entertainment related technologies to provide world-class facilities and contents," Michael Corcoran, prexy of Paramount Licensing Inc. said at a Seoul inauguration ceremony.
Par will be the first Hollywood studio to build an amusement park in Korea, though it was not the first to announce plans to do so. Last November, Universal Studios also announced a pact with POSCO Engineering & Construction to construct a $3 billion theme park south of Seoul that will bow in 2012.
Paramount Movie Park Korea is expected to entertain some 5 million visitors annually, according to the two companies. "We are considering that over 1 million tourists from China, Japan and Southeast Asian countries will visit the theme park in three years," Lee Dong-ho (second ref: Lee), Daewoo Motor Sales prexy said.
Paramount Licensing will not invest in the project, but will be its licensor and take the role of managing the creative development. Korea's Woori Bank and the U.K.'s Barclays Bank will be in charge of finding investors and major stakeholders by October.
© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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