“I can talk to absolutely anybody. But in the world of people that I would just love to sit there and be like, ‘Let me ask you this! Let me ask you this! Let me love you about this and let this audience do the same.’ I think an ultimate get for me — and we’ll never get him — Bill Murray. This is going to sound weird, but I would love to suck Bill Murray’s dick in that way that I do — not the actual dick-in-mouth version, but the verbal, ‘Oh my god, without you I wouldn’t be who I am!’ way. That’s the people I gravitate toward, who without their art I don’t think I would have gravitated toward mine.” [ Wired ]
As foreseen , Chinese exhibitor The Wanda Group has acquired AMC Entertainment — the second-largest theater chain in the US, comprising some 5,000 screens and 18,000 employees — from a domestic investment partnership for $2.6 billion, nearly 80 percent of which will go toward AMC’s staggering debt. Pending approval by the feds in both countries, the deal will result in the world’s biggest theatrical empire, one headquartered in a nation previously known as the most prodigious owner of US government debt . Come on, you know you’re excited. I mean, at least it’s good for jobs? Ahem: A press release circulated late Sunday points out Wanda’s commitment to retaining AMC’s leadership in Kansas City, which has clearly managed the operation with unparalleled finesse and expertise. But it also alludes to the prospects of both picking up more theaters and upgrading outdated ones — a roughly $500 million pledge that would seem, between the lines, anyway, to suggest that consolidation and/or closures of underperforming venues are likely imminent. In any case it means increased dependency on Chinese cash in the form of tax revenues from 300 theaters in the States alone, handing a pretty significant chunk of regulatory leverage to a government that has evinced a disregard for such taxes on its own turf and is historically known to play hardball elsewhere . What could go wrong? But! As Deadline’s David Lieberman points out , the deal further enhances ties with IMAX, which has long invested its own capital in the thriving Chinese marketplace. You win, Christopher Nolan . [ Deadline ]
