Disney Shanghai park could involve media deal

By George Chen and Gina Keating

SHANGHAI/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Plans for a long-discussed Disneyland park in Shanghai could include a major media agreement between Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) and the Shanghai government that could give the company unrivaled access to the market, documents obtained by Reuters show.

The joint venture agreement would give Disney a huge advantage over U.S. media rivals by allowing it to bypass foreign film import quotas and summer and holiday blackout periods, as well as television censorship, both imposed by the central government.

While its rivals vie for the 20 slots allotted by the Chinese government each year to foreign films, Disney would be tasked with creating movies, TV and web fare to promote its brand, stories and characters to grow attendance at the Disney and Shanghai government-owned park, the documents show.

Disney has engaged in on-again, off-again talks for more than a decade with the Chinese government over plans to build a large theme park and hotel complex in the southern outskirts of Shanghai's Pudong district, where Fortune 500 companies like General Motors Corp GM.N have regional headquarters.

Those talks were stalled by a Shanghai government scandal in 2006 and Disney's need to focus on Hong Kong Disneyland, which opened in 2005 to a string of operational problems and lackluster attendance.

The plan documents came from a presentation given by Shanghai city government officials at a meeting in April with local entrepreneurs and scholars who were then asked how to improve the plan, a source familiar with the meeting said.

Two people familiar with the documents, who declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the situation, said that a legally binding final agreement would not be reached until some time after the Beijing Olympics in August.

One source also said that current talks are focusing on other issues, such as potential funding and profit sharing, rather than the media and marketing proposal.