Star Trek fans in China will soon be able to go to a Star Trek experience.
Star Trek fans in China are in for a treat as a new Paramount-themed amusement park is being built in Kunming, China. The new project according, to Variety, is going to be built by Dianchi Lake in southwestern Yunnan province’s capital city Kunming. It’s going to cost a whopping $8 billion and will span 643 acres.
This will make the new Paramount park the third-largest in China, behind Shanghai Disneyland (963 acres) and Universal Beijing Resort (990 acres).
The thing that separates this and other theme parks in the country is that the Paramount park will have a Star Trek-themed “entertainment option”. The area is apparently going to be called The Final Frontier and will join parts of the park that will have thrill rides via Adventure City and Wonderland. Films such as Mission Impossible and The Italian Job will have rides in this part of the park.
The iconic film strip turned media franchise, Peanuts will also have its own entertainment location.
Paramount needs to open up new Star Trek locations state-side
While it’s great for international fans to get new Star Trek-themed attractions, fans stateside have no such option. If a Star Trek fan wants to go somewhere Trek-themed, they’re most likely going to be going to a fan-made and fan-ran attraction. There are currently no Paramount-backed Star Trek attractions.
Sure, there are some that have the support of the IP holders, but none that have the financial backing. There have been Trek-themed locations before, namely the Las Vegas attraction that was once booming but eventually fell off and was eventually shut down.
It’ll be interesting to see if this leads to a bigger expansion state-side for Paramount and ViacomCBS. It isn’t or wasn’t, uncommon to see major properties pop up in independently owned outlets before. Peanuts used to have an established home in Ohio’s Cedar Point, and Marvel (pre-Disney) had rides at Universal Studios.
It’s very possible that Trek could be leased out to more established and popular theme parks, or ViacomCBS could launch their own Paramount-themed park in the US.