Paramount's Building a Theme Park ... in Korea
Universal Studios? Yawn. Disneyland? Been there. What the theme park industry needs is some fresh ideas and new blood! And what a better source for rejuvenation than the oldest movie studio in Hollywood? Variety and the Associated Press report that Paramount Pictures will spend $1.4 billion on a theme park in Seoul, South Korea, scheduled to open in 2011. It'll be the first Hollywood-produced theme park in that country (Universal and MGM have announced plans, too), and Paramount's first theme park anywhere**. About 30 attractions are planned, based primarily on Paramount products such as Mission: Impossible and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. (Not Indiana Jones, though -- Disney already snatched that one up.)
Sounds OK, but why Korea? As in all matters of real estate, it's location, location, location. South Korea is situated right between Japan (whose citizens often have lots of tourism dollars to spend) and China (whose citizens are numerous). Southern California might seem like a more obvious choice, but have you been to L.A. lately? There's not a piece of undeveloped land there big enough for a Starbucks anymore, let alone an amusement park.
Defamer has a snarky post suggesting rides for the new park, including "The Sonny Corleone Tollbooth Adventure" and "There Will Be Fun! Daniel Plainview Musical Revue." I'd contribute some of my own, but the last thing I would ever want to do is make fun of Paramount. I won't stop you, though.
**Actually, as some commenters have pointed out, this isn't entirely true. Paramount bought several already-operating theme parks in the early '90s and installed a few movie-related attractions in them before finally selling the entire chain in 2006. The South Korea project will be Paramount's first entirely movie-related theme park, and the first one to be built specifically for Paramount rather than acquired later.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-21-2008 @ 11:07AM
Kevin said...
When I read this I immediately thought of Paramounts Kings Dominion in Virginia. Turns out that Paramount recently sold that theme park, so this new one may be paramounts only theme park currently being run, but its certainly not Paramounts first theme park ever. Not to be a stickler, but I just wanted to throw that out there in case anyone else reading this article has the same initial reaction that I did.
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5-21-2008 @ 11:32AM
James said...
This is far from Paramount's first theme park anywhere. Up until last year they ran a whole chain of top-notch parks including Paramount King's Island in Cincinnati, Paramount King's Dominion in Virginia, and one near Toronto.
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5-21-2008 @ 12:37PM
Astin said...
Yup, Paramount Canada's Wonderland had a nice little run for awhile. It's now back to being Canada's Wonderland. The thing is, Paramount bought existing parks and didn't do much to associate them with their movies. Sure, there were rides and simulators named after movies (we had Top Gun, Days of Thunder, etc..), but the majority of older rides stayed the same. It wasn't like Universal Studios, where you KNEW you were on The Back to The Future Ride because everything about it was tied to the movie.
But yah, not their first park by a long shot.
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5-21-2008 @ 12:48PM
Bradley said...
I'm not sure why my post didn't show up the first time, but yeah Cedar Fair bought the 4 N.A. parks in June 2006.
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5-21-2008 @ 3:34PM
mike said...
The Parks that were Paramount Parks are no longer owned by Paramount/Viacom. They were split off into the CBS side of the split at the end of 2005 and then purchased by Cedar Fair (as mentioned above)... this seems to be the only park Viacom/Paramount actually owns now.
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5-22-2008 @ 12:19AM
Allison said...
I think that whoever did their market research at Paramount chose right for the location of this park. Having just spent time in Seoul and going to one of their theme parks (the decidedly very Disney, but not actually Disney, themed "Lotte World"), there is a big demand for this type of entertainment there. On a weekday in the middle of winter the place was pretty packed. The people there seem to love American things like movies and fashion, and a lot of people in the Seoul area have a lot of money. It will be interesting to see how it all works out.
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6-14-2008 @ 1:11AM
joey said...
Why not build a Theme Park in Australia ?
:)
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