FILM THEME PARK SET FOR U.K.

Byline: Laura Frost and Dawn Hayes Bloomberg Business News

MAI Group Plc and Time Warner Inc. said they plan to invest 225 million pounds ($334 million) to build a film and television production studio and theme park in West London.

MAI, which last week announced a 2.9 billion-pound merger with United News & Media Plc, said it and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner plan to form a joint venture company to develop the site. Each partner will initially invest 700,000 pounds.

The park, which is expected to open in the spring or summer of 1999, will be modeled on other theme parks developed in Australia and Germany. The U.K. park, which will be twice the size of the Australian site, is expected to attract in excess of 2 million visitors a year, the companies said.

The Australian park has been "very profitable, very successful," Sandy Reisenbach, Warner Bros. executive vice president of marketing and planning, said at a news conference. He said the park had already been enlarged once to accommodate demand.

The U.K. park, which will take two years to build, will employ about 3,500 people in total for construction and staffing the park once it opens. A planning application for the Hillingdon site will be filed shortly, the companies said.

MAI's shares recently traded down 3 pence at 422p. Time Warner shares fell 3/8 to 42 7/8 in New York. They hit a five-month high of 44 1/8 Feb. 7.