April 24, 2006

Genius picks up plaid

Genius Products, the home entertainment distributor controlled by The Weinstein Company, announced in Variety today that it has been made the exclusive distributor "to release Tartan USA's library and new titles domestically on DVD."

Tartan USA is the domestic operations for Tartan Films, a producer, financier and distributor based in the UK. According to Variety, "[the] First title to roll out under the pact will be Korean pic "Cello," which will be marketed under Tartan's Asia Extreme genre imprint." Korean box office winner "Oldboy" was also distributed under this banner.

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February 23, 2006

Emmett/Furla Recommit with Millenium

Emmett/Furla Films has renewed their nonexclusive agreement with Millenum Films to produce at least eight pics a year budgeted in the $25 million-$65 million range over the next three years. According to Variety, the companies have completed more than 25 films over the last five years. From George Furla,

"Our relationship with Avi [Lerner] and Millennium is truly multidimensional. Not only are we able to cash-flow pre-production and development costs, we can also fully fund the negative costs of entire projects. By doing this, we are able to spread the risk and can thus produce more projects together."
Tapping into its private equity backing, Emmett/Furla has provided money for both development and production, including development funds. Outside of its deal with Millenium, the company has provided partial and complete production funding for such films as "King of California" and "The Tenants."

Emmett/Furla is a wholly-owned subsidiary of public company Family Room Entertainment (FMLY).

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Cash in the Catalog

Mixed amidst Viacom's first release of financial data ― net earnings of $130 million, down nearly 70% due to a $94 million loss in the studio driven by a 42% drop in worldwide theatrical revenues ― was more detail on its impending sale of the DreamWorks 61-title library. Executives indicated that the expect at least $900 million for the library, up from earlier estimates of $800 million-$850 million.

While Paramount is still in talks with George Soros' Soros Capital Management, according to Variety, other possible buyers include "Goldman Sachs, led by banker Joseph Ravitch, [who] is said to be readying an offering worth about $930 million. Ravitch helped put together financing for the Weinstein Co. and the sale of MGM to Sony and a group of investors. And another possible offer is said to be coming from Dresdner Bank representing some Russian investors." Should Soros prove successful, it is reported that he might be joined by Dune Capital Management the film co-financing entity, which is a spinoff from Soros Capital.

Whichever way it falls out, this puts the value of the rights to these films at an average of approximately $15 million.

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February 22, 2006

Rationalizing Genius

Now that Genius Products and the Weinstein Company are well on their way to forging a joint home video distribution company, what would that mean for Genius' efforts to distribute product theatrically through the Wellspring brand acquired in March 2005 when they completed their purchase of American Vantage Media Corporation. Succinctly stated by Variety:

"Wellspring -- which specializes largely in foreign-language pics and has a track record with long-running arthouse films -- was acquired by Genius last year, and the company's role in Genius' plans fell into question when the Weinstein Co. entered the fold."
Genius purchased Wellspring with a focus on its film and TV library with more than 750 titles, an 800-title short film library, and now has confirmed that choice by announcing that all titles remaining in the Wellspring pipeline will be distributed theatrically by TWC and Genius will handle home video distribution. And this rationalization will save Genius a hefty $1 million a year in overhead.

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February 21, 2006

OK, It's On Demand, But By Whom?

Today, MediaPost provided news from E-Poll, an online market research/polling company focused on entertainment, that

"when asked which pricing model they would prefer for an ideal VOD service, more than 75 percent of respondents opted for "free"--meaning no monthly subscription fee and no per-show fee."
Brilliant, and clearly timely, E-Poll went on to highlight the good news that "the same proportion of respondents said they would accept a 60-second pre-roll commercial if it meant VOD were free."

Taken in tandem with statistics from Leichtman Research - providing actionable research on broadband, media and entertainment - on MultiChannelNews that less than 20% of those surveyed would utilize only VOD or DVRs, that 65% of digital-cable customers have used VOD., and backing up today's research, that only 16% of current VOD users would be very likely to pay $0.99 to watch a program on demand.

Add in Comcast's announcement that it is implementing technology to insert "fresh" ads into VOD streams and it becomes clear that DVD dollar levels for VOD programming are a bit off, excepting cash picked up from iTunes videocasts. So, take that revenue out of your business plan for Revenge of the Scary Thing IV.

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