DEAL COULD RESTORE LEO’S ROAR

MGM’s lenders are now seemingly faced with a kind of Hobson’s choice: allow the studio to fall into bankruptcy and get little if anything from its liquidation or allow their $4 billion in notes to be converted into equity, bring in Spyglass Entertainment to take over management, and lend the new entity even more money to ramp up production again. According to the Los Angeles Times, the two principal lenders, Anchorage Advisors and Highland Capital, signed on to the deal with Spyglass and its chiefs, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, this week and presented it to the remaining 100+ debt owners during a conference call on Wednesday. Among other things, the plan calls for closing MGM’s distribution division and farm it out to another studio, most likely Paramount, with which Barber and Birnbaum have an ongoing relationship.