Indian business group Reliance is considering a plan to invest $550 million in return for a 50% stake in a new version of DreamWorks, which Steven Spielberg would create after exiting his deal with Paramount.It is no small irony that the same issue of THR has an article called 'Global media gains will be built by BRIC', which observes that 'Growth in the roaring economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China -- the so-called BRIC nations -- will outpace the more mature markets of the U.S. and Western Europe, with PwC forecasting 13.6% average annual growth in BRIC compared with just 4.8% annual growth in the U.S. media industry and 5.4% in Western Europe.' It is just that the PWC report had not anticipated one of the Indian growth engines to set up a virtual studio in Hollywood.
The Mumbai-based conglomerate was approached as a potential DreamWorks investor by CAA and likely will take at least two more weeks to mull the proposition. Hired by DreamWorks chairman David Geffen, entertainment attorney Skip Brittenham has created a detailed business plan that would give Reliance a key role in the new DreamWorks but grant Spielberg extensive creative control of the reinvented studio.
Details including $500 million or so in accompanying bank debt could take the rest of the summer to sort out, and even the issue of ownership control remains fuzzy. Spielberg has been on the hunt for equity and other financing for several weeks or more. The interest from Reliance was first reported on the Wall Street Journal's Web site.
Meanwhile Variety goes into more detail about the implications of this possible deal:
The emergence of Reliance as DreamWorks' principal new financier marks the latest and most dramatic example of talent -- and their agents -- aligning with outsiders and using other people's money.Beyond emerging as DreamWorks' principal new financier, the Indian company closed development deals with seven Hollywood heavyweights.
At Cannes last month, Reliance trumpeted deals with seven production companies headed by high-profile thesps (Daily Variety, May 19) and this week pacted to pay each company at least $1.2 million-$2 million to develop projects.
A very exciting time to be working in India, that's for sure.Reliance's deals with Cage, Carrey, Clooney, Columbus, Hanks, Pitt and Roach will potentially give that talent the opportunity to fashion a finished script that can be shopped to studios along with 50% of the film's financing. That will allow the talent to make the most favorable deal possible, because if a studio doesn't want to pay a star or director's usual gross deal, the package can be shopped to another studio.
While CAA is steering Reliance at a deliberately measured pace, the Indian conglom likely sees the arrangement as getting its foot in the door. Reliance may well finance the films itself and make a distribution deal with a studio.
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1 comment:
they can throw down half a billion for dreamwroks in a couple weeks but they can't come up with a few extra thousand to make the deal to get the imaginasian center in LA, AFTER EIGHT MONTHS!!!!!!!!!!!! SHAME. Any firm that spends more money on Attorneys to negotiate deal then the deal is worth is a wast of time and investment money. ADlabs wins the prize for wasting money on attorneys. Spielberg better watch out.
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