Legendary Entertainment 
Wanda Media Group 
News Corporation 
Jack Gao, the former senior VP at Dalian Wanda and former interim head of Legendary Entertainment, has reemerged as the head of a company that could massively expand the Chinese box office.Gao is set as CEO of Smart Cinema, which will stream new-release movies to hundreds of millions of mobile devices in China within the theatrical window. Revenues will be considered as part of box-office earnings.The "mobile exhibition" system is also capable of carrying library and specialty titles, all delivered...
Smart Cinema
Jack
Gao
Founder / CEO
Jack Gao explains his role simply enough: he operates at the intersection of Wanda’s internationalization drive and anything to do with the cultural industries. That has made Gao a major dealmaker, responsible for bringing in the Legendary Entertainment, Odeon-UCI and Dick Clark acquisitions in 2016 alone, and as such one of the most important men in the Hollywood business scene.
In Jan. 2017 he recently added interim, operational control of Legendary following the exit of Thomas Tull. An engineer with degrees from Harbin and UCLA, Gao has the top table experience that comes from working successively for Bill Gates (Microsoft China) Rupert Murdoch (News Corp.) and Wanda’s ambitious chairman Wang Jianlin. 2017 could test Gao’s management skills over his dealmaking smarts: Wanda remains on the hunt for further acquisitions, but resistance to that is growing both in China and the U.S.
