Entertainment & Media Law Signal : Canadian Entertainment Lawyers for Licensing, Intellectual Property & New Media Matters

Sundance Film Festival 2012 in Park City, Utah has not disappointed so far, with flurries of activity early and often. Here are a few of the recent film and television deals:

• Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions purchased the US rights to Arbitrage, a Richard Gere financial thriller, for about $2 million.
• Entertainment One acquired the North American rights to Wish You Were Here.
• Fox Search Light bought Beasts of the Southern Wild after winning a bidding war against Weinstein, Sony, Focus and a few others. However, Sony and Focus still managed to make a few other acquisitions. Fox also purchased the worldwide distribution rights to The Surrogate for about $6 million.
• Sony Pictures Classics bought the rights to Celeste and Jesse Forever across North America, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Bidding continues for the remaining foreign rights.
• Sony Pictures Worldwide acquired Samuel Goldwyn’s Robot and Frank.
• Focus Features bought Seth Rogen’s newest comedy For a Good Time, Call ….
• IFC Films acquired Liberal Arts and IFC Midnight acquired The Pact, bothwithin North America. Meanwhile, Picturehouse Entertainment and Revolver Entertainment bought the UK rights to Liberal Arts and The Imposter.
• Magnolia bought the North American rights to V/H/S horror film for over $1 million, after a successful bidding war. Apparently, Magnolia has chosen an alternative release schedule for the film by initially releasing it through VOD prior to a theatrical release.
• And, Millenium Entertainment acquired the US rights to Robert De Niro film Red Lights.

On the television side, National Geographic acquired the rights to climate change documentary, Chasing Ice.

A complete wrap up of all of this year’s action at Sundance will follow soon.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

 Adding a fresh new piece to the Signal, I will be providing brief updates on recent deal news and activity in the industry.

• To begin close to home, Lionsgate started off 2012 quickly by announcing that it has acquired Summit Entertainment for approximately $412.5 million. Lionsgate will pay Summit in cash and stock, and in return receives Summit’s content library as well as a healthy amount of cash added to their balance sheet. Summit shareholders are used to seeing box office success from teen series Twilight and now Lionsgate hopes to duplicate that success with new franchise The Hunger Games, with the first installment set to release in March.
• If you thought 2011 was a big year for deals at Sundance Film Festival, then get ready for this year. While no deals can be reported as of yet from Sundance (which begins tomorrow), there will likely be a long list of distribution deals in just a few days. This year, every movie that will be part of the Premieres category is still for sale. It will be interesting to see which distributors snatch up all of the Canadian rights this year.
• On the other side of the globe, Cinemacraft, an interactive media company based in Singapore, has just raised funds for both a new interactive video ad network, as well as a consumer video application. Expect their applications to be released in Japan, USA, India and Indonesia in the near future. They will be targeting the smartphone and tablet media content users as more and more people begin weaning off traditional television and look for alternate ways to watch TV on the go. Should we expect a renewed debate over vertical integration and mobile broadcasting as company’s like Cinemacraft attempt to present new mobile applications?

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

On Monday, September 13, 2010, Ernst & Young and Heenan Blaikie LLP hosted a TIFF panel discussion at the Park Hyatt in Toronto. We hope to have an audio version of the panel discussion available on this blog in the coming days. In the meantime, I was able to ask some follow-up questions to one of the panellists following the conclusion of the film festival.

Rob Friedman, Co-Chairman and CEO of Summit Entertainment, was kind enough to extend the panel discussion onto this blog and share his thoughts on TIFF and beyond. 

Q: The final question of the panel was in regards to who the big players are in film financing. Before time ran out, the next question was going to be about what your own financiers are telling you. 

A: Everybody is ready, willing and able to continue to lend. Obviously, pricing is different than it was when we first got our facilities in place and we still have plenty of time on our facilities, but we are exploring new banking arrangements and everybody wants to play.

Q: There was an interesting conversation on the panel with regards to genre and impressions from various financiers with regards to producing certain kinds of films. Are you feeling any external pressure in terms of what should be produced?

A: No, not as it relates to financiers. You tend to get a different appetite in the users in the international marketplace but you never discuss specific movies with the financiers – at least I don’t.

Q. It was reported in a local paper that deal making has been “as slow as molasses” this year at TIFF. Was that your impression this year?

A: Well a lot of the movies that were there already had distributors. The last week has shown a lot of deal making. I just don’t think that there was the usual bidding frenzy because I think there were a lot of movies that were well received but didn’t necessarily fill the needs of distributors.

Q. Have you seen a shift in the kinds of films that are being showcased at festivals like TIFF? What is the current trend? 

A. I think you saw a fair number of more exploitive films for "midnight madness" , but I think the mainstream fare was pretty consistent – smattering of comedies, a smattering of dramas, obviously great filmmaking prowess. Year in and year out it is different just because the movies are different. I didn’t see any trending.

Q. In the next year or so, what do you think the biggest difference will be in the marketplace in terms of what distributors will be doing.

A. I don’t think you are going to see any big change. I don’t think we are going to see any massive life changing event. I think you are going to see slow progress to exploring new windows and new distribution opportunities. I think it’s going to be slow and steady. I don’t think you are going to see anything dramatic.

Q. A few years ago and even now, ‘pirating’ became the most terrifying term in the industry. What are distributors afraid of these days?

A. I think it’s the fractionalization of consumer decision making as it relates to viewing their content. I think the sooner that can start to coalesce into some very specific trends, it will help everybody.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link