ORLANDO, Fla. _ Cirque du Soleil has acquired Blue Man Group.
The purchase won't result in blended on-stage productions, Chris Wink, one of Blue Man's co-founders, said Thursday.
"It's not about blurring the brands," said Wink, who with co-founder Phil Stanton will remain creative directors of Blue Man Group.
"We think they can help get our show to new parts of the world that we couldn't get to on our own. ... China, South America, Eastern Europe," he said.
"First and foremost, this acquisition is an idea for us to diversify the content, but each brand is going to remain autonomous and each team is going to remain autonomous," said Daniel Lamarre, president and CEO of Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil.
The purchase price was not announced, but he said the number was somewhere in the "tens of millions."
Cirque saw Blue Man as being "underdeveloped internationally," Lamarre said.
"The real interest for us is to take our big marketing and distribution machine and bring Blue Man Group in a lot of countries where they've never been before," he said.
Cirque du Soleil shows tour in 450 cities, Lamarre said. Blue Man will be fit into that circuit, he said.
"Now when I'm going to China next week, I have this amazing opportunity to bring a new show in my portfolio, which is Blue Man Group," Lamarre said.
Both entertainment groups have touring productions and standing shows in multiple cities. Their overlapping markets are Orlando and Las Vegas.
Wink said he looks forward to collaboration on future Cirque-Blue Man projects.
"What could our two companies create together? Even in different medias or different characters altogether?" he said. "We have a lot of creative capacity."
