It is believed that Miramax intends to seek more film assets once buyers led by Ron Tudor and Colony Capital LLC complete their purchase of the Walt Disney Co. unit (not due to close until the end of this year), such future deals will likely focus on libraries of older films. Such libraries are being discounted by other potential buyers as a result of shrinking DVD sales. No other assets have been identified yet.

Ron Tutor, and Colony Capital’s Chairman, Tom Barrack declined to comment.
Colony Capital joined Ron Tutor, and other investors on July 29 in a US$660M bid to buy Miramax, whose main asset is about 700 movies + TV content that have priviously been released, the bid was accepted by Miramax owner Disney earlier this week.

It is widely expected that Tutor and Colony will hire an executive to manage the Miramax library when the deal closes by the end of this year.

No new film or TV production is in the offing, but Tudor and Company intend to seek distribution arrangements for the portion of the library that is not covered by TV broadcast agreements.

Miramax, one of several film assets on the block, has been the subject of several failed bids in the past.

Los Angeles-based Relativity Media LLC agreed to take over the marketing and distribution operations of Liberty Media Corp’s Overture unit last week.

Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer Inc., the studio that owns a library with more than 4,000 titles, is seeking buyers after falling behind on US$3.7B of debt.

Miramax has distribution in the US through agreements with Liberty’s Starz pay TV service and The Walt Disney Company. The the word on the street is that the buyers are paying about 4 times the library’s cash flow.

Many of those agreements expire within 3 yrs, giving Tutor and Colony Capital the ability to sign new TV, Internet and other digital agreements.

Tutor brought Colony Capital into the deal to help finance the purchase. It was reported that Barrack decided later to personally invest and bring in some other individuals too.

Note: The group is still seeking debt financing before the deal closes.

Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr. www.livetradingnews.com

Posted by Shayne Heffernan on Jul 31st, 2010and filed underLatest News.You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site