The bustling crowds and continuous cash flow at Walt Disney parks create a perpetual motion machine of traffic and revenue, making countless enterprises envious—if they can do it, why can't we? Looking back, many major domestic companies have harbored Disney dreams, only to be crushed by reality without exception.

Recently, another "Chinese Disney" dream has shattered. Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World has met its fate of being fully acquired by Korean capital.

On September 21, Heheyan Cultural Tourism, under Korean private equity giant MBK Partners, announced that as the restructuring investor, it had officially completed the full acquisition of the former Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World and formally renamed it "Suzhou Yangcheng Peninsula Park."

This cultural tourism project could be described as a burden that Huayi Brothers had long wanted to shed, despite it once being an important step in Huayi Brothers' "de-cinematization" strategy.

The 690-acre theme park suffered consecutive losses from its opening in 2018 through 2020 and entered bankruptcy restructuring in 2024.

When a park once held in high hopes goes bankrupt, it becomes an excellent target for international capital to "bottom-fish."

Starting from early 2025, Heheyan, preparing to take over, has been busy revitalizing this project. From current results, Heheyan's 100 million yuan capital injection has successfully revitalized the theme park that had a total investment of 3.5 billion yuan but years of losses—during the summer trial operation period in 2025, Suzhou Yangcheng Peninsula Park received 350,000 visitors, with a single-day peak of 20,000 visitors and revenue growth of 68% year-over-year.

This isn't MBK's first move on Chinese cultural tourism projects. In 2021, MBK acquired four theme parks under Haichang Ocean Park in Wuhan, Chengdu, Tianjin, and Qingdao for 6.53 billion yuan, along with a 66% stake in Zhengzhou Haichang Ocean Park.

Besides Korean capital, Singapore's Sinar Mas Group, UK's Schroders Capital, and others have also entered the Chinese hospitality and tourism asset market.

Foreign capital frequently signaling bottom-fishing of Chinese cultural tourism assets—what does this mean? Must Chinese enterprises' dream of creating a domestic Disney rely on foreign capital for rescue?

**Huayi Brothers' Park Dream Shattered**

In Huayi Brothers' original vision, the Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World model should have been identical to Walt Disney parks: making money through IP.

But from a flagship project with high expectations to a hot potato they urgently wanted to dispose of, the role transformation of Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World took only seven years.

The grand vision emerged in 2009 when Huayi Brothers successfully listed on the ChiNext board, holding multiple Feng Xiaogang films with continuous masterpieces, crowned as "China's first entertainment stock." At the peak of success, Huayi Brothers founder Wang Zhongjun set a "de-cinematization" strategy to expand into experiential entertainment.

In public occasions, Wang Zhongjun repeatedly stated that Huayi Brothers would learn from Hollywood's operation model, building Huayi Brothers into China's version of "Walt Disney," diversifying revenue streams with theme parks as a crucial component.

Wang Zhonglei, the other "brother" and Huayi Brothers' second-in-command, stated in late 2014 that within the next 4-5 years, they would establish experiential entertainment projects—Huayi Brothers Movie Worlds—in 20 cities.

In the original plan, these 20 projects would contribute $18 billion in annual revenue to the company, representing a highly imaginative business segment.

To realize this ambition, Huayi Brothers acted quickly. By the end of 2017, within three years, Huayi Brothers had signed 18 projects, with multiple nationwide projects already under construction.

Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World was born under this strategic background. As early as 2011, Huayi Brothers acquired land in Suzhou to develop a movie theme park project, establishing the joint venture company Huayi Cinema Suzhou Co., Ltd.

In 2015, the 3.5 billion yuan Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World officially broke ground, becoming the company's rare self-operated heavy asset project. To achieve "making money through IP," Huayi Brothers incorporated popular movie IPs under its banner, including "If You Are the One," "Assembly," and "Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame," into the Suzhou theme park. On the 690-acre land, Huayi created seven movie themes.

In 2018, after seven years of planning and development, Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World finally officially opened, giving Huayi Brothers its first movie theme park. To create buzz, Huayi Brothers even held the global premiere of "Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings" at this location.

However, this Suzhou theme park quickly disappointed Huayi Brothers' expectations—the project fell into losses immediately upon opening.

Financial reports show that from 2018 to 2020, Huayi Cinema Suzhou Co., Ltd., which operated the project, posted losses of 134 million yuan, 162 million yuan, and 93 million yuan respectively. In 2021, Huayi Brothers chose to sell 14.29% of the project company's equity, after which Huayi Brothers no longer disclosed the operating conditions of Huayi Cinema Suzhou Co., Ltd.

By 2024, Huayi Cinema Suzhou Co., Ltd. appeared directly on auction announcements, with Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World declaring complete failure.

During the same period, due to poor performance in both main and side businesses, Huayi Brothers began losing money from 2018, accumulating net losses of 8.2 billion yuan by 2024, criticized for strategic failure in "de-cinematization."

**Theme Parks: Water and Soil Issues?**

Cultural tourism projects represented by theme parks have characteristics of large investments and long payback periods, requiring entrants to plan for the long term and wait patiently. However, economic environments change rapidly, and many enterprises face development difficulties before fruits ripen, making them unable and unwilling to wait. For cash flow needs, they can only put projects that once consumed huge investments up for sale.

Such cases have been numerous over the past decades.

Funding difficulties are just surface phenomena. Why do "Disney dreams" always encounter water and soil issues domestically? Focusing on Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World theme park, it boils down to one problem: visitors don't buy it.

When Huayi Brothers planned this theme park, they incorporated several popular movie IPs, but embarrassingly, the popularity of these movie IPs wasn't long-lasting, incomparable to the maturity and recognition of Marvel's "superhero alliance" or Disney's "Mickey Mouse" IPs. Even Huayi Brothers couldn't guarantee box office success for sequels of the same movie IP.

The "If You Are the One" series was once the golden standard of Feng Xiaogang comedies. The 2008 debut won the annual championship with 260 million yuan box office; the 2010 sequel was equally unstoppable, reaching third place annually with 470 million yuan. However, "If You Are the One 3" during the 2024 New Year period suffered complete defeat in popularity and reputation, ultimately earning only 102 million yuan, forming stark contrast with previous successes.

When typical movies lose box office appeal, how long can movie "derivative products" like theme parks sustain on movie nostalgia? Especially, the movies that Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World relied on were all adult-oriented genres like romance, war, and fantasy, not "suitable for all ages" like Disney, appropriate for family visits.

This isn't just Huayi Brothers' problem alone; IP shortcomings are endemic in the domestic cultural tourism industry. As a cultural industry giant, Huayi already had certain advantages in IP cultivation. More enterprises that accumulated substantial funds during economic upturns hoped to replicate real estate logic in cultural tourism, pouring massive investments into hardware construction while underinvesting in content incubation, refined operations, and long-term brand building.

So why would foreign capital invest in these "failed assets"?

From past investment experience, MBK has always enjoyed "distressed investing."

Distressed investing refers to investors buying valuable assets in distress at discounted prices, profiting through future asset earnings—a common investment approach. The market has funds specializing in distressed investing, making a living by finding quality assets with liquidity crises or operational difficulties.

Under this investment model, for MBK to profit from Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World, it needs to rely on "transformation or operation" to achieve future returns. MBK has an impressive track record in this regard.

For instance, in 2009, MBK jointly invested with Goldman Sachs in the consistently loss-making Universal Studios Japan. By 2015, Universal Studios Japan's visitor numbers had surpassed Tokyo DisneySea, becoming the world's fourth-largest theme park. Universal Studios Japan's strong performance allowed MBK to exit smoothly after eight years of holding at approximately 20 times price-earnings ratio.

For Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World, MBK's operational transformation strategy has two main approaches: first, introducing Nai Long IP to create a family-friendly park; second, like Universal Studios Japan, making localized adaptations, such as creating "Scholar's Return" based on Suzhou culture and attempting night economy, both aimed at creating a "differentiated" theme park.

As a private equity fund, MBK didn't invest heavily in park IP cultivation but utilized existing IPs, making location-appropriate adaptations to make the park more suitable for visitors. From trial operation results, MBK's approach has been effective.

**Foreign Capital Collective Bottom-Fishing**

Previously, cases of overseas capital integrating Chinese cultural tourism projects were extremely rare, but in recent years, the trend has quietly changed.

First, policy conditions have relaxed.

Since 2021, China has adjusted approval conditions for entertainment venue operations, allowing foreign investors to legally establish entertainment venues in China and removing foreign investment ratio restrictions. It was also in this year that MBK acquired multiple Haichang Ocean Parks in Wuhan, Chengdu, Tianjin, Qingdao, and Zhengzhou in one go.

In September this year, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange issued a notice clearly "removing restrictions on capital account foreign exchange income and its settlement proceeds in RMB from being used to purchase non-self-use residential property," meaning foreign capital can use foreign exchange funds to participate in non-self-use residential investment, including hotels, shops, office buildings, and other assets.

These are all viewed as signals that the country encourages foreign investment in Chinese commercial real estate.

Indeed, more foreign capital has begun focusing on domestic hospitality and tourism assets.

Media reports indicate that early last year, Singapore's Sinar Mas Group acquired Shanghai Wanda Reign Hotel on Shanghai's Bund, belonging to Wanda Hotels' top luxury hotel category. In July this year, global asset management giant Schroders Capital partnered with Zhejiang Xiziinternational to establish a 3 billion yuan real estate fund, focusing on quality office buildings and consumer infrastructure in Yangtze River Delta core cities.

These foreign capitals aren't purely taking over; their actions follow complete commercial logic.

For example, beyond the underlying logic of distressed investing, MBK selectively invests, distinguishing which assets can achieve future profitability, especially projects like theme parks with long investment cycles.

Among Huayi Brothers' multiple movie worlds nationwide, MBK only selected Suzhou. Of Haichang Ocean Park's 11 marine culture-themed cultural tourism projects, MBK only wanted four plus majority stake in Zhengzhou.

Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World entered the investment scope mainly due to its location. For theme parks, visitor flow equals life.

Suzhou Huayi Brothers Movie World is located in the core area of Yangcheng Lake National Tourism Resort, possessing irreplaceable location advantages. Suzhou can both receive visitor flow from Shanghai and radiate to surrounding economically active new first-tier cities.

Foreign investment layout shows obvious regional concentration, with the Yangtze River Delta region becoming the most favored investment area due to convenient transportation, vigorous consumer markets, and concentrated high-net-worth populations.

The Yangtze River Delta is also China's most densely packed theme park region. Where people and money converge naturally becomes advantageous territory for cultural tourism development. Against this background, MBK's task is to use minimum cost to help this cultural tourism project—occupying core location but facing operational difficulties—stand out among numerous Yangtze River Delta theme parks, relying on current explosive cultural tourism demand to find vitality.

Foreign capital collectively bottom-fishing essentially reflects confidence in China's cultural tourism market. As funds re-enter, those "failed" assets will become valuable assets, returning to the market. As for former players like Huayi Brothers, they become small footnotes in China's cultural tourism frenzy era. After the flood, their cultural "bitter journey" will continue winding forward.