The Metropolis is proposed as an $8.17 billion film center and movie-themed holiday park in the eastern Chinese port city of Qingdao, located halfway between Beijing and Shanghai.
With China's film box-office revenue heating up, the region is ripe with opportunity, Ara said.
"The goal is to establish a presence in the media and entertainment industries," he added. "There will be state-of-the-art production facilities in Qingdao for TV and film from around the world, particularly from the United States, along with forging partnerships with U.S. companies."
Ara is tasked with negotiating those deals with production companies, studios and high-level producers, he said.
Among his challenges, "Documents I negotiate typically also have to be in Mandarin for review by my clients. It does create an additional level of timing that needs to be factored into every step of negotiating a contract. It has to be done parallel with the English-language contract."
There also are cultural differences from a business perspective, Ara added.
"In the U.S., sometimes we're comfortable with contracts that are hundreds of pages long," he said. "In China, shorter contracts are preferred."
While there are some similarities in the entertainment business, Ara said, "There also are stark differences."
For instance, in the United States, the ultimate decisions on a deal are often made by a board of directors or shareholders of a company, he said.
"With Chinese companies, typically management is very focused on just one or a few individuals," Ara said, adding, "I actually think that makes things easier. It cuts through a lot of the process and you don't have to go though the rigmarole of red tape."
Ara considers himself among the pioneers of doing business in China, having had his first foray there in 2005.
Back then, he said, "People were more focused on the U.S. But now, eyes are on countries like China, Brazil and Russia, and more and more lawyers like me are looking at how to get into those industries and work with clients in those regions."
While Hollywood probably will always have a lock on the big blockbusters, Ara said, high-quality smaller films can be made in foreign locales with smaller budgets, and "without all the glitz and glamour of Hollywood."
There is money to be made, Ara said.
"Hollywood needs to think outside the box and help those locales produce those local productions with the same production value it produces its own films, rather than to keep feeding them everything we think they should be watching."
- PAT BRODERICK
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