‘China’s Rupert Murdoch’ takes full control of animation studio behind Kung Fu Panda 3
The animation studio, the first major tie-up between Hollywood and China, is being offloaded by NBCUniversal after just six years
CMC Capital Partners, led by media mogul Li Ruigang, dubbed China’s Rupert Murdoch, announced on Friday that it has acquired full ownership of animation studio Oriental DreamWorks from partner NBCUniversal and plans to rebrand it as Pearl Studio.
The Shanghai-based Oriental DreamWorks – the first major tie-up between Hollywood and China – was behind the global box office hit Kung Fu Panda 3, one of the highest grossing animation films in China, raking in about US$143.5 million at home and US$377.6 million worldwide in 2016.
NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast, inherited a 45 per cent stake in the studio when it bought Jeffery Katzenberg’s DreamWorks Animation for US$3.8 billion in 2016.
“We are enormously grateful to our joint venture partners and especially NBCUniversal,” said Li, chairman and chief executive officer of CMC Capital Partners. “The animation market could not be stronger right now in China or globally. We believe Pearl Studio is in a very unique and enviable position to be a bold new independent voice in the animation community.”
NBCUniversal’s decision to offload its stake in the five-year-old animation studio is not surprising because of its widely reported disagreements with CMC, say industry observers.
