Monday, February 28, 2011

Industry Thoughts | Private Equity and the Oscars

What a night for the Oscars. James Franco acts like, well, James Franco, Anne Hathaway continues to show why she's awesome and extremely gorgeous, and Inception didn't get Best Original Screenplay (though hats off to The King's Speech for winning it). While watching the show (and switching between it and the awesome Knicks-Heat game), I realized that, like how I mentioned in my Fashion Week post, private equity firms have significant stakes in film studios!
I thought I'd share a few of them, with the help of Pitchbook:
  • MGM (through Spyglass Entertainment/Cerberus Capital Management)
  • Miramax (through Colony Capital among other firms)
  • Spyglass Entertainment (through Cerberus Capital Management)
  • Legendary Pictures (through ABRY Partners, Ridgemont Equity Partners, Falcon Investment Group, and a few others)
  • Village Roadshow Pictures (through Tailwind Capital, among other firms)
  • RealD (formerly through Shamrock Capital) - great piece from WSJ PE Beat here
It's important to note that you'll see private equity firms put stakes into stronger film production studios in general; MGM, Miramax, Spyglass, Legendary, and Village Roadshow all have strong films within their portfolios. I haven't seen PE interested more in the independent film studios, but it's always good to keep an eye there.

Let's end with a hat tip to Kirk Douglas in light of his amazing appearance at yesterday's Oscars.