Korean Firm May Attempt to Buy Orion Film Studio : Hollywood: Samsung Group reportedly has a plan for $300-million buyout, $500-million cash infusion.

The giant Samsung Group of Korea may become Hollywood’s next foreign buyer.

The $35-billion-a-year conglomerate, which has interests in consumer electronics and other areas, has quietly made inquiries about purchasing Orion Pictures Corp., according to several individuals familiar with the approach.

Samsung formulated a plan in recent weeks under which it would pay roughly $300 million for the studio, or some part of it, and would provide a cash infusion of up to $500 million to beef up Orion’s sagging movie and television operations, the individuals said.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the Korean company was interested in purchasing all of Orion’s approximately 22 million outstanding shares or whether it might simply seek to purchase the 70% stake owned by billionaire investor John Kluge.

An Orion spokesman declined to comment, and a Samsung spokesman said he wasn’t aware of his company’s interest in Orion.

An outright purchase of Orion would put a fifth large film company under foreign control.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., a Japanese electronics firm on which Samsung has long modeled itself, last week agreed to acquire MCA Inc., the parent of Universal Studios, for $6.59 billion. Columbia Pictures is owned by Japan’s Sony Corp., 20th Century Fox Film Corp. is owned by Australia’s News Corp., and MGM-Pathe Communications Co. is controlled by Italian investor Giancarlo Parretti.

Orion, plagued by a losing streak at the box office, in October retained Salomon Bros., a New York investment banking firm, to seek new funds for the company.

Apparently, Samsung simultaneously began looking for a way to match its videocassette recorders and other electronic “hardware” with a producer of entertainment “software,” much as Matsushita and Sony have done.

Several people said the Korean company within the last week approached Orion through the Hollywood law firm of Bloom, Dekom & Hergott, but a partner with the firm denied any involvement with Samsung.

Seoul-based Samsung is one of Korea’s so-called chaebol-- huge, family-run concerns that often have interests in widely varied businesses.

Founded by Tokyo-educated B. C. Lee in 1938, Samsung was initially a food export company. It eventually developed huge insurance and electronics operations, largely through self-conscious imitation of Matsushita and other Japanese companies.

Fortune magazine identified Samsung earlier this year as the world’s 20th-largest industrial concern, with bigger sales than such better-known companies as Honda, Volkswagen and Boeing. One reason for Samsung’s low profile in the United States has been its practice of supplying televisions, microwave ovens and VCRs to be sold under brand names owned by Sears, J. C. Penney and others.

Orion, with $485 million in sales last year, is much smaller than major studios such as MCA’s Universal or Time Warner’s Warner Bros. But the New York-based company has made its mark by granting unusual autonomy to directors and other filmmakers since it was founded in 1978 by Arthur Krim, Eric Pleskow and other executives who quit United Artists Corp. in a dispute with Transamerica Corp., which owned it at the time.

The company’s main asset is its 800-title film library, which includes “Platoon,” “Amadeus,” “RoboCop,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” and the “Cagney & Lacey” TV series. The company does not own a studio lot.

“Dances With Wolves,” an Orion film about American Indians directed by and starring Kevin Costner, surprised much of Hollywood by turning into a box-office hit despite its three-hour length and risky subject matter.

But the company has suffered from repeated movie disappointments and has invested heavily in one-hour TV dramas. These traditionally require a substantial investment by the studio when they are filmed and don’t return a profit unless they remain on the networks long enough to justify the sale of reruns in syndication. Orion placed “WIOU,” “Unequal Justice” and “Lifestories” on the networks this year.

MCA’s senior managers, in selling to Matsushita, struck a deal to remain in place for at least five years. Orion’s Krim might not seek the same assurances from Samsung, however. The 80-year-old executive has reportedly tired of the rigors of running a film company.

The sale could also lead to the departure of Woody Allen, Orion’s most prominent filmmaker. Allen, who is close to Krim, has been courted by Walt Disney Co. for several years. Disney was responsible for Allen’s only recent projects outside Orion--”New York Stories” and the upcoming “Scenes From a Mall.” Disney reportedly believes that Allen, whose films rarely draw large audiences, would be a prestigious addition to its roster.

A sale for $300 million would apparently point to a per-share price in the area of $15--which might leave little profit for Kluge. He has purchased his stake since 1987 for prices that reportedly ranged between $14 and $19 a share, though he exercised warrants to buy 4.3 million shares at $6 each only a month ago.

With a total debt of about $375 million, Orion has been under pressure to find new funding. The company recently picked up some financing by selling foreign distribution and other rights to Columbia Pictures under a long-term contract. Samsung would probably seek to negotiate an end to that arrangement if it were to go ahead with a formal bid for Orion, one person familiar with the studio said.

Orion’s stock closed unchanged Wednesday at $13 a share in New York Stock Exchange trading. The stock has taken a roller-coaster ride this year, trading as low as $6.875 and as high as $23.75. It sold for $7 a share as recently as October.

Securities analysts have said they expected a higher price for Orion. In a Feb. 22 report compiled by the InvesText research service, for instance, a Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. analyst predicted that a sale might bring as much as $30 a share.

Yet Matsushita’s purchase of MCA for much less than expected is widely believed to have set lower benchmarks for company sales in a period when financing for takeovers has been tight.

Since the MCA sale, Hollywood has been rife with rumors that other big Japanese electronics companies such as Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Corp. were exploring possible entertainment investments.

Apparently, though, Samsung matches any of them when it comes to global ambition. As Lee Kun-hee, the company’s chief executive, told Forbes magazine in a 1988 interview: “I have a dream to build Samsung into a world-class company, a genuine multinational.”

Staff writer John Lippman contributed to this story.

THE SAMSUNG GROUP AND ORION PICTURES

The Samsung Group, a giant Korean electronics conglomerate, has made inquiries about a possible acquisition of Hollywood’s Orion Pictures Corp. Some facts and figures:

SAMSUNG ORION *1989 sales $35.2 billion $485 million *1989 profits $515 million $15.1 million *Employees 176,947 730 *Headquarters Seoul New York

Source: Value Line, Fortune magazine