Alcon Media Group has won its $417.5 million bid to acquire the film library of Village Roadshow Entertainment Group.
The spans 108 films, including the dozens of pictures the company co-produced and co-financed in association with Warner Brothers Pictures since 1997, such as “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the “Ocean’s Eleven” series, “The Matrix” trilogy, “Joker,” “Ready Player One,” “Sherlock Holmes” and “Wonka.”
The pact includes Village Roadshow’s entire library of intellectual properties, distribution rights and cash flows. In a release touting the purchase, Alcon said the library generates an estimated $50 million annually. Village Roadshow’s assets also include a slate of films and scripted and unscripted television series that the company was developing.
Alcon’s films include “Blade Runner 2049″ and “The Blind Side,” as well as Christopher Nolan’s remake of “Insomnia” and Denis Villeneuve’s crime thriller “Prisoners.” Alcon recently rebooted the “Garfield” franchise with Chris Pratt.
Village Roadshow filed for bankruptcy protection in March of this year with $223.8 million in asset-backed secured notes and $163.1 million of senior secured debt, according to court documents. At the time, Village Roadshow was engaged in a legal battle with Warner Bros. over “The Matrix Resurrections,” a 2021 sequel to the sci-fi series. Village Roadshow had sued for breach of contract after the studio released the feature on Max the same day as theaters as part of a pandemic era shift in distribution strategy. Warner Bros. was ultimately successful in arbitration, reportedly winning $125 million.
Alcon entered as a stalking horse bidder soon after Village Roadshow went bankrupt filing. Other bidders also made offers.
In a joint statement, Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove, co-CEOs of AMG and its production and financing group Alcon Entertainment, said they were “pleased” by the deal and called it “accretive to Alcon’s existing film library.”
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“We intend to continue to be opportunistic in the future as other attractive assets become available in the marketplace,” the pair added.
Alcon said that after the deal, it is now the “copyright holder of one of the largest independent feature film libraries in the world.”
A source at Warner Bros. Discovery said distribution rights to the films in the library will continue to be owned by the studio. Warner Bros. will also retain the right to co-finance derivative works from those films.
The deal was negotiated on behalf of Alcon by the Company’s COO Scott Parish and CFO Jason Kummer. Alcon Media Group is represented by Scott Edel, Brandon Cherry, and Vadim Rubinstein of Loeb & Loeb LLP. Village Roadshow is represented by Justin R. Bernbrock, Matthew T. Benz, Jennifer L. Nassiri and Alyssa Paddock of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP and Joseph M. Mulvihill, Carol E. Thompson and Benjamin C. Carver of Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor LLP.
From Variety US