SEOUL: Hollywood film studio Paramount Pictures said on Thursday it will explore developing a South Korean theme park with a local partner, in what would be the entertainment company's first amusement resort outside North America.
The partner, South Korea's Daewoo Motor Sales, said it planned to build the park in the airport city of Inchon, south of Seoul, and estimated the cost to total 1.03 billion.
A Daewoo executive said Daewoo alone would raise the funds, but added that he expected Paramount, owned by Viacom, to help with finding investors.
The amusement park would be the fourth by a US entertainment group in Asia.
Paramount, known for hits such as Titanic and Mission Impossible, said a feasibility study conducted by Economics Research Associates called for an $800 million theme park to entertain more than 5 million guests annually.
"It would feature characters, attractions, facilities based on our motion picture library," Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman said on a conference call about quarterly results in New York. He said Paramount reached a licensing deal with Daewoo, and the US company has allocated no capital for the project.
The planned facility, on a 50-hectare plot, will feature rides, movie studios, a 300-room hotel, a water park, a media centre and shopping malls, Daewoo said in a statement issued at a joint news conference in Inchon.
The park is due to open in 2009, Daewoo said, aiming to lure a growing number of Asian tourists as well as South Korea's affluent population.
Construction will start this year and the whole park will be completed before the 2014 Asian Games to be held in Inchon, said Daewoo, a South Korean automobile sales company that also has a construction business.
The proposal would make Paramount the first and only foreign entertainment firm to operate a theme park in South Korea. Two of the country's biggest conglomerates, Lotte Group and Samsung Group, each have one theme park in Seoul.
Walt Disney has Disneyland parks in Japan and Hong Kong, and Universal Studios, part of General Electric, runs a theme park in Osaka, Japan.
Other Hollywood entertainment giants, including MGM Studios and Universal Studios, are also looking to make forays into South Korea.
