Furious row erupts over £2.5BILLION Disneyland-style UK theme park with rides based on popular films and TV shows
A FURIOUS row has erupted over a £2.5billion Disneyland-style UK theme park with rides based on popular films and TV shows.
Hollywood giant Paramount Global is suing a firm which it hired to build a theme park inspired by the studio’s biggest movies.
Paramount has been trying for more than a decade to build the park on the Swanscombe Peninsula in Kent – at an estimated cost of £2.5billion.
The blueprint for the park mooted a Godfather-themed restaurant called Corleones and a Mission Impossible “training centre’.
ITV and the BBC also backed the plans, and agreed to let the park base rides on iconic TV shows.
But the site remains a barren wasteland after a backlash from wildlife groups stalled building work.
Paramount is now owed £11.3million by London Resort for breach of contract, Bloomberg reports.
But London Resort Company, the firm hired by Paramount, decided last year to settle its debts by giving creditors shares.
Paramount voted against the deal, but lost out after most other creditors backed it.
State-backed lender the British Business Bank also invested in the planned resort – and joined Paramount in voting against the deal.
Now Paramount has claimed that the deal was a “sham”, with debts falsely inflated and palmed off to a third party.
The studio is demanding through a High Court suit to see the paperwork setting out London Resort’s workings.
A lawyer for Paramount wrote that the studio “questioned the fact that there was purportedly a dramatic increase in the Company’s debts in 2022 to £100 million”.
She added that a debt exchange involving one creditor “was a sham, legally ineffective, intended to subvert the statutory scheme, made in breach of duty”.
London Resort said that the creditor was not a connected party, and that releasing the documents would give its competitors an advantage.
The company is owned by Kuwait’s Al-Humaidi family through holding companies in the UK and the Isle of Man.
The family also own Kent football club Ebbsfleet United, which voted in favour of the debt deal.