ICAHN: “I WILL SPARE NO EXPENSE” AGAINST LIONS GATE

Carl Icahn stepped up his battle against the management of Lions Gate Entertainment Monday as he filed a lawsuit in Canada against the company alleging that it acted illegally in a $100-million debt-for-equity exchange that increased Mark Rachesky’s stake in the company and diluted the holdings of all other Lions Gate shareholders, including Icahn’s. Icahn called the move “an improper defensive tactic and abusive of the rights of all other shareholders of Lions Gate.” Icahn said he planned to file a separate lawsuit in New York as well. He is asking both courts — Lions Gate has separate offices in Vancouver and Santa Monica — to issue an injunction barring the three-way transaction involving Lions Gate, Kornitzer Capital Management, and Rachesky. In a statement, he vowed to press on with his battle. “I will spare no expense in holding the culpable parties responsible for their behavior,” he said in a statement. In a related matter, Lionsgate Home Entertainment said that it had acquired rights to distribute several of Francis Ford Coppola’s movies on TV, Blu-ray Disc, electronic sell-through and video-on-demand. Terms were not disclosed. Among the films is Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War film, Apocalypse Now, which will be released as a nine-hour special edition, including Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse Now Redux, and Heart of Darkness, an award-winning documentary about the production of the original movies.