MGM WON’T HAVE TO FUND THE HOBBIT AFTER ALL

MGM has handed over foreign distribution of the two The Hobbit movies to Warner Bros. in exchange for Warners’ putting up the entire $530-million production budget for the movies, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Friday). A previous agreement called for the two studios to split the production costs, with Warners getting domestic distribution and [...]

LIONS GATE FIRES NEW SHOTS AT CARL ICAHN

Lions Gate Entertainment wants the U.S. District Court in Manhattan to require Carl Icahn to disclose information about whether he entered into a secret agreement with MGM creditors to merge the studio on his terms with Lions Gate, the Wall Street Journal reported today (Tuesday). In its court filing, Lions Gate also accused Icahn of [...]

MGM EMERGES FROM BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION

Leo the Lion roared back to life on Monday as MGM said that it had emerged from bankruptcy protection with $500 million to fund new movies and television shows. The company is now owned by its previous lenders, who had agreed to swap debt for equity and installed Spyglass Entertainment chiefs Gary Barber and Roger [...]

ICAHN LAUNCHES WEBSITE AIMED AT LIONS GATE SHAREHOLDERS

Perhaps sensing that his bid to take over Lions Gate Entertainment, the parent of Lionsgate Studios, has been greeted unenthusiastically by the news media, Carl Icahn has launched a website, www.SaveLionsGate.com, to present his case. It appears just one week before shareholders at their annual meeting are due to vote on a new board of [...]

CLASSIC FILMS TO GO ON “MORATORIUM” BEFORE RESTORATION

Warner Bros. Home Video announced Tuesday that, as of Dec. 31, it is withdrawing three classic films from its DVD catalog while it restores and remasters them digitally for release on standard DVD and high-definition Blu-ray Disc formats in 2012. The three films affected by the moratorium, MGM’s Singing in the Rain and Warner Bros./Seven [...]

REPORT: THE WIZARD OF OZ TO BE REMADE

For most of his life, from the time he wrote the original script for the 1939 MGM classic The Wizard of Oz until his death in 1980, Noel Langley complained about the way the script was later revised by writers Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, who received writing co-credits. Now, according to DeadlineHollywood.com, Warner [...]

ICAHN A LION TAMER?

Activist investor Carl Icahn may be turning out to be a more influential figure in the resurrection of MGM than earlier reports had indicated. According to today’s (Thursday) New York Post, besides securing for himself a seat on the MGM board (which had been widely reported), Icahn succeeded in obtaining an agreement from MGM’s debtholders [...]

MGM SUBMITS “PRE-PACKAGED” BANKRUPTCY

MGM finally filed its “pre-packaged” bankruptcy plan today (Friday), following years of struggle to lift itself out from under a debt load that it occurred when its owners acquired it from investor Kirk Kerkorian in a $5-billion leveraged buyout in 2005. The filing came days after MGM creditors agreed to swap debt for equity and [...]

MGM CLASSICS TO BE MANUFACTURED ON DEMAND

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, which distributes movies from MGM’s library of classics, has hit on a way to make them available to online retailers who may be reluctant to pile them up as part of their regular inventory, tying up capital in the process. It is teaming up with Allied Vaughn, which produces DVDs [...]

WHAT’S ICAHN UP TO NOW?

While some reports indicated on Friday that activist investor Carl Icahn wound up supporting Spyglass Entertainment’s bid for MGM in exchange for a seat on the MGM board, other reports claim that Icahn is still attempting to buy up MGM debt in an effort to thwart the Spyglass deal and merge the studio with Lionsgate, [...]

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