Disney Shanghai park could involve media deal

'IMPOSSIBLE TO PREDICT'

The final talks for a Disneyland park in Shanghai could be accelerated after the Olympics, as central government leaders in Beijing prefer keeping the global focus on China's booming economy and improving standard of living in major cities, one of the sources said.

Disney has been in talks since 1994 over the Shanghai park and was close to a deal about two years ago, when the project was stalled by a corruption scandal that sidelined several top Shanghai government officials involved in the negotiations, two sources close to the deal said.

Disney's U.S. entertainment rivals, including NBC Universal and Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N) Warner Bros, have held talks with the Shanghai city government in the past decade but could not iron out differences over concerns such as management control and copyright protection. NBC Universal is 80 percent owned by General Electric Co (GE.N) and 20 percent by Vivendi (VIV.PA).

Despite Chinese media reports that a deal is imminent, Disney parks spokeswoman Leslie Goodman said there has been "no agreement and no deal" to proceed with plans for a park.

Disney Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs said in December of 2006 that the Shanghai park was "something that I think we'd like to see happen down the road" but that the "course ... (and) speed of that conversation" had been "impossible to predict."

Since then, the company has made no official statement about the progress of talks except to shoot down talk of a deal, emanating mainly from the Chinese press.

In March, Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng made a surprise announcement that the city had applied to the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, which directly reports to the cabinet, for approval to build a Disney theme park in China's financial hub.

While Disney allows several years to build its international theme parks, the company was planning to set up a "special mini park" first at the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010 to promote a formal Disney theme park to tens of millions of tourists expected to attend the event, according to one of the sources.

(Reporting by Gina Keating and George Chen, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)