- Why Careful Shoppers Are Great for the Box Office
- Black Friday at Best Buy
- Facebook's Biggest-Ever Holiday Shopping Season
- Facebook's New Dual Class Structure - Slow Steps to an IPO
- Can Murdoch Help Bing Challenge Google and Shift the Content Equation?
- Twilight, Inc., A Worldwide Craze
- Oprah to Leave Syndication in 2011
- Sony's E-Reader Shortage and the Digital Book Battle
- Salesforce.com Brings Facebook and Twitter's Social Capabilities to Businesses
- Sumner Redstone's Companies Face Off Yet Again
More Videos
- Why Careful Shoppers Are Great for the Box Office
- Black Friday at Best Buy
- Facebook's Biggest-Ever Holiday Shopping Season
- Facebook's New Dual Class Structure - Slow Steps to an IPO
- Can Murdoch Help Bing Challenge Google and Shift the Content Equation?
- Twilight, Inc., A Worldwide Craze
- Oprah to Leave Syndication in 2011
- Sony's E-Reader Shortage and the Digital Book Battle
- Salesforce.com Brings Facebook and Twitter's Social Capabilities to Businesses
- Sumner Redstone's Companies Face Off Yet Again
RSS FEED
MOST SHARED
- Timeless and Time-Tested Warren Buffett Watch Predictions
- Should Homeowners Be Able To Walk Away From Mortgage?
- Governments Must Take Steps To Avoid More Dubais: El-Erian
- Black Friday Sales Disappoint Investors; Amazon Up
- Goldman Sachs Party Ban: No Gatherings of 12 or More
- Blue Nile CEO: 'We're Having the Best Cyber Monday Ever'
- BofA Aims to Clearly Spell Out Credit Card Terms
- Get Paid Six Figures to Wear a T-Shirt?
- Dubai World Set to Restructure About $26 Billion of Total Debt
- Oil Demand Sees Year-Over-Year Rise, First Since 2007
- Treasury Threatens Banks, Not Borrowers
- We're Approaching a Market Bubble: Portfolio Manager
- Hershey Shares: What Options Are Saying
- Nov. 30: Unusual Volume Leaders
- Why Careful Shoppers Are Great for the Box Office
- Blue Nile CEO: 'We're Having the Best Cyber Monday Ever'
- Best Online Retailers to Buy Now: Internet Analyst
- ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue: A Financial Success
- Cyber Monday: The Last Vestige of Dotcom Hype
- Lesson From Dubai: Start Cutting Risk In Your Portfolio
- Iranian Seizure of British Yacht Pushes Oil Above $77
- Should Homeowners Be Able to Stop Paying Mortgage?
- Buffett's Predictions For Next Year—And Every Year
- The World's Biggest Debtor Nations
- Goldman Sachs Party Ban: No Gatherings of 12 or More
- Fed Tweaking Plan to Pull Money Back out of Economy
- Scientists Gone Wild: Climate Debate Turns Nasty
- Blue Nile CEO: Having 'Best Cyber Monday Ever'
Media Money
Text Size 
 |
AP |
DreamWorks [DWA
Loading...
()
] chiefs Steven Spielberg and David Geffen are looking for their next move, and India may play a starring role.
Their deal with Viacom's[VIA
Loading...
()
] Paramount Pictures expires at the end of this year, and Hollywood has been buzzing about conflict between the famous director and Viacom's top brass. And for months, rumors have been flying about what they might do next.
Now Spielberg and Co. are in talks with one of India's biggest entertainment conglomerates to create a joint venture: a new independent studio.
Here's how it would work: Reliance would provide between $500 million and $600 million in financing, allowing Spielberg & Co to raise debt, giving the new independent studio up to $1.5 billion dollars in financing. The studio- likely run by Spielberg, Geffen, and Stacey Snider, now their top executive at DreamWorks--would churn out six movies a year. Then they'd distribute through one of the major movie studios--Universal Pictures (CNBC's sister company) and 20th Century Fox are reportedly frontrunners for that deal.
It would make sense for the DreamWorks team--they would get the creative freedom they can't necessarily get as a part of a public company. And the fact that their investors are continents away should help guarantee their operational independence.
It also makes a lot of sense for Reliance, which gets to leverage the weak dollar to get a stake in Hollywood's most famous director. Reliance says it plans to spend more than $1 billion dollars over the next year and a half to build up its global entertainment empire. And this potential deal would be just the latest in a long string of deals with big Hollywood names. Last month at the Cannes Film Festival Relianced announced financing deals for George Clooney, Tom Hanks, and Brad Pitt's production houses among others.
Reliance has big ambitious plans: a portfolio of new media and mobile businesses, divisions to tackle digital distribution, traditional home video distribution, plus the launch of a new Indian broadcast TV network. Spielberg's talent would provide a revenue stream for some of these ventures, but then there's the other angle. Spielberg could use these platforms as new ways to distribute his films down the road.
Standard and Poors Equity Analyst Tuna Amobi says that Reliance has such significant assets, that spending $600 million to invest in Spielberg would be a drop in the bucket. Amobi says he wouldn't be surprised if one day down the road Reliance tried to buy one of the major movie studios. There's no question -- India is rising.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes