Brad & Angelina’s Game Stop

Financier Ryan Kavanaugh is having a pretty good week. First his court battle with Los Angeles spin consultant Michael Sitrick went his way last Friday –pending a promised appeal–when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant ruled that Kavanaugh had not misrepresented his assets in 2002 when he claimed he was unable to pay Sitrick $7.7 million that had been lost when Kavanaugh invested it on Sitrick’s behalf.

Yesterday, he and his deep-pockets partner in his recently formed Relativity Capital, the hedge fund Elliott Associates, announced jointly with Universal Pictures a co-financing deal worth about a billion dollars. Relativity will co-finance (at an average 50 percent of the production, distribution and marketing costs) some 45 pictures, based on picking 75 percent of Uni’s slate over the next four years.

“We spent one year getting this done with Universal,” said Kavanaugh yesterday, “and the reason it took so long is it’s a complete change from anything that’s ever been done. We go 50-50 with them and we’re perfectly aligned all the way down the capital structure, top to bottom. It’s really a deal where we look at all of these pictures together.”

What this does basically,” says Universal Executive Vice President Michael Joe, “is that in one deal we’ve covered the bulk of our financing needs over the next three or four years, through a deal with one partner.”

Joe points out that Universal is more than willing to include Relativity, which is staffed in part by film industry veterans, in every assaying aspect of the studio’s green lighting process:

They see the script, they know the creative elements of cast, director, producer, et cetera, they know the production cost of the movie…they basically have all the information we have at the time we’re making the decision–they get essentially all the same things we would look at here.

The deal is distinctive in two regards. The first is in the degree of control Relativity has in selecting which pictures they’ll partner on. (Universal won’t be not holding back certain of their most promising pictures, the earmark of certain “slate” deals investors have made in the past–e.g., hedge fund Dune Entertainent’s highly successful Fox run might have been all the sweeter if the studio had given them a piece of the $574 million worldwide-grossing Night At the Museum.) Kavanaugh currently has similarly generous provisions in a deal he made with Sony about a year ago, updating their previous relationship).

Secondly, as explained in the joint press release,

The agreement is a key milestone for Relativity in that it is the first deal where Relativity acts as the principal and will retain the Mezzanine and Equity. Under the deal, Relativity will co-finance approximately 75% of Universal’s releases during the term. Relativity Capital underwrote the capital structure of the deal, and did not use an outside bank.

Amy Wallace explained the structure of a typical film investment deal most lucidly in her profile of Kavanaugh last April:

First come the lower-risk investors, who commonly earn an 8 percent return on their money; then the “mezzanine” level, who are promised about 15 percent; and at the very bottom, the equity level, who own a piece of a movie’s ongoing revenue, if any. For a blockbuster, this can mean a flood. For a bomb, it means they lose everything.

angel @ 04/01/2008 at 9:25 am
+++++++++
Yeah, even Jessica Biel and Jessica Simpsom have their own production co . so no big deal !

I’m middle age woman but I definitely don’t envy Maniston middle age body, and I think it’s not a compliment calling an almost 40 woman “cute ” , sound like ******. and she was not even cute .

Thanks bdj for the articles and links, great job as always

New thread

Miley Cyrus has the same deal as Aniston. Neither have the power to tell the production companies NO. Brad does.

God, keep blessing and watching over the Jolie-Pitt family.

Please leave JA off of this thread. She is trying so hard to be relevant. She will never be in the category of super star like Brad and Angie, but I wish her well.

people tabloid call it the “planc C” production
kissing ass

Plan Caca is better

((((NEW THREAD)))

How cute maddox has his wallet out….beautiful people~

Angie is preggy and yet she is sooo sexy!why is that?!sooo unfair!!!hehehe!
Glad to see them so well and happy!
More love and blessings to the JoliePitt!

Good day n night to all JP fans around the world!

Thanks Jared

~~~~~New Thread~~~~

Diamond @ 04/01/2008 at 12:23 pm

OH STFU you do not live with the Jolie-Pitts 24/7 to know what is happening inside their house and stop reading tabloids made your brain so dull you believe every lies written on it. You have selective memory when it comes to Angelina and Shiloh there are lots of pictures of them.. Shiloh inter acting with her mother. Mind your own kids if you have one Fugly B*tch!

I hope that she is finally eating enough for the baby’s sake. Don’t get mad people, I am a concerned fan.

I’ll bet she’s having a boy. If she’s carrying high then Angie will have a mini-Brad.