Who are the key private equity players backing film productions in Europe?

Europe has a reputation as the most generous region in the world for film producers to access soft money. At least 47% of a typical European fiction film’s budget comes from a combination of direct public funding and production incentives, according to European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) figures. The rest comes from broadcasters (typically 18%), producer investments (17%) and pre-sales (15%). Other sources of finance, including private equity, are “negligible”, according to EAO.

Indeed, this lack of private equity funding is a striking feature of the European film market. Of course, there are numerous high-net-worth individuals who put money into films on an ad-hoc basis. But the list of private funders who consistently back film projects is very small, compared with the US. 

This has not gone unnoticed. Within the European Union, there are moves to address the problem through the European Investment Bank’s venture capital arm, the European Investment Fund (EIF). EIF’s $234m (€200m) Media­Invest equity investment programme, launched in 2022, has invested in individual funds focused on film production, hoping to spur more institutional and private investors to commit money to the sector.

Its first investment was announced in 2023: $29m (€25m) into alternative investment fund Logical Content Ventures. Run by Paris-based Logical Pictures Group, the fund has raised $60m (€52m) from institutional and private investors to invest in films. The stamp of approval from EIF has helped with the fundraising, says Logical Pictures president Frédéric Fiore, helping to validate a fund that operates in the film financing arena, a sector viewed as risky and exotic by many investors. 

In February 2025, EIF committed €25m to Finland and London-based fund IPR.VC for its third fund focused on film and TV, which has raised $123m (€105m). IPR.VC has long-term slate deals with US-based A24 and XYZ Films, as well as European players such as mk2 Films, Mubi and Red Bull Studios. 

Separately, a $12m (€10m) fund, Spain-based Moby Dick Film Capital, has just made its first investments in films after starting to fundraise in 2022. Regulated by the Spanish and European authorities, its investors include institutions, family offices, private individuals and the Spanish government.

There are a number of private funds focused on film finance too, including Danish-US-German firm Thank You Pictures, which claims significant institutional and private investor backing. Still, the list is notable for its brevity. There are several reasons for this, chief among them that film as an investment opportunity continues to be viewed with caution, even mistrust, by investors in Europe.

“We struggle to explain to financial institutions, banks and investors that film could be an asset class,” admits Fiore. His view is backed up by Moby Dick Film Capital founder Jesús Martínez, who says it is “very, very difficult” to find investors for a film fund, particularly a new one without a track record. In Europe, the perception is that funding movies is not about wealth creation, but about supporting culture, he adds.

For Fiore, rich investors who dabble in film — maybe because they have met a charismatic producer or a famous actor and have decided to put money into their project — can be part of the problem. “It is kind of hurting our work,” he says. “These guys just lose everything, usually. And their conclusion is that it’s a shitty business, or that it’s not even a business but only for glamour.”

Small asset class

In Europe, the legacy of collapsed film funds also hangs over the sector. Notable examples include Germany’s VIP Medienfonds, which backed a string of Hollywood features before its CEO Andreas Schmid was arrested in 2005 and later imprisoned for tax evasion.

There are other challenges. For many institutions with hundreds of millions of euros to invest, film is not just risky but too small an asset class to be worth attention. Why put €5m into a film fund, the reasoning goes, that will take just as much oversight as a €100m investment into real estate.

The market is small, too. To date, IPR.VC and Logical Content Ventures are the only regulated funds with a proven track record as film equity financers in Europe. Both say they would like more competitors. “When we are fundraising and meeting big institutions, one of their first questions is, ‘Who are your competitors?’” says Fiore, who began his career as a consultant and remembers his first boss saying: “When you don’t have a competitor, you don’t have a market.”

Film is also regarded as a complex and risky investment, says Martínez. “You need to understand very well how this business works. There are not a lot of people with this background.” Contracts and negotiation are key. “You need to be very careful. It all depends on the structure [of the contract]. You can either make or lose money on the same movie.” Adds Fiore: “What we are doing is not rocket science, we’re not saving lives. But our business is tricky because it is very specific. Everything is in the details. You can have a bad performance because you have worded [the contract] in a bad way.”

Meanwhile, for newcomers, the film industry has become a tougher place as an investment proposition. Production costs have gone up, but the value of films has gone down over the years as audiences enjoy access to other forms of content, all for free, from the likes TikTok and YouTube, says producer Lars Sylvest of Thank You Pictures. As a result, it is significantly tougher to score the foreign sales that are so important in helping a film move into profit.

Sylvest recalls that when he started in the industry in 1999, a film could plug its financing gap with sales into three key territories: UK, France and Germany. “Now, you can fund half of the budget by selling the world except domestic. The only way to make your money back is by having a healthy amount of soft money and then equity against domestic, and then hope domestic does more than average.” 

Fiore confirms the challenge: “When we launched our first fund, the US was just an upside. We used to get all our money back and be in profit with the international market. Domestic was the cherry on the cake. Now, we need to count on the US market. It’s becoming more and more important to get US distribution, but US distribution is getting more complicated.” The market has polarised as a result, with investors particularly keen on commercial projects with a built-in marketing hook, such as an A-list cast or top director.

English-language projects, because of their perceived ability to travel, are favoured. Anything regarded as middle-of-the-road or too arthouse is written off as an investment proposition. Pre-sales are an important criteria for investors, too. “Territories that don’t pre-sell rarely sell for more afterwards,” says Sylvest. “It is so rare that any buyer buys a title they reject in the first place. Because, frankly, most movies play better in the minds of the reader than on screen afterwards.” 

Finding the right projects out of Europe is a challenge for many investors. “The problem is that most European projects are either commercially problematic international arthouse or commercially viable only for the national markets,” says Sylvest. For him, not enough arthouse projects cross borders to make them a meaningful investment; securing US distribution, where there is potential for significant upside, is likely to be challenging. “If you back arthouse projects, you have to do 20 of them for one to break out,” he says. 

It is not just a tough business for newcomers to understand how it all works, it is also tough to build a deal flow. “You’ve got to get enough projects so that you can be very selective. As in any investment business, everything is about our selection,” says Fiore. 

Then there is the matter of expectations. A film might target a return of 10% per annum for investors. But, as Sylvest points out, there are many other places to invest that might be more profitable — and carry less risk. “You could get that with Brazilian state bonds. So why should investors put the money in a movie where you could lose more than Brazilian state bonds?” 

Investment strategies

Because of the myriad challenges facing the film industry, leading investors have developed a number of strategies to mitigate risk and maximise potential returns. IPR.VC has focused its strategy on funding slate deals with highly regarded companies with a proven track record, namely A24, Mubi, XYZ Films, mk2 and Red Bull Studios. 

“These types of collaborations tell you a lot about our approach,” says IPR.VC managing partner Andrea Scarso. “They are exceptionally good, not only in creating the content but also in building the long-term value in distribution and connecting with audiences.”

Moby Dick Film Capital, meanwhile, is focused on international, mainly English-language, projects with A-list cast, an experienced A-list director, a strong sales agent and a completion bond in place. It targets “elevated genre content”. To mitigate risk, it has a mandate to invest in a diverse range of genres and to back projects by a range of different people and companies.

Logical Content Ventures, for its part, targets market-driven, mainly English-language films. “My bread and butter is feature films that people think are US productions but were shot in Europe,” says Fiore. LCV will back films by debut filmmakers — partly because they are cheaper to make — but only with a seasoned producer supporting them. He also stresses that backing a diverse range of projects is key.

Sylvest works closely with Roeg Sutherland and Sarah Schweitzman, co-heads of CAA Media Finance, noting that “they understand how to consistently build packages that are commercially viable”. More than half of Thank You Pictures’ projects are shot in Europe, but almost all have been packaged out of the US, he notes.Together with Joe Neurauter, Sylvest is also an investor in the huge Penzing Studios outside Munich, which has one of the largest virtual production stages in Europe. He sees technology advances, along with soft money, as one of the key opportunities to reduce production costs, and consequently help movies to become more profitable.  

If a clear strategy is followed, many funders insist that film is a good investment opportunity. “There are a lot of good reasons why large investors should consider investing in media as an alternative asset class,” says Scarso. It is a good way to diversify an investment portfolio, he notes, pointing to films’ low correlation to macroeconomic trends and the performance of assets such as stocks or property. In Europe, backing films comes with a high degree of “downside protection”, adds Fiore. Soft money and pre-sales mean that film funds are not taking on all the risk themselves. It also brings the chance to build a library of IP with long-term value. Film can also return money faster to investors than sinking it in companies, where the rewards can take years to materialise. All of the funds interviewed by Screen International target strong returns. Fiore says Logical’s first fund returned an IRR (internal rate of return) of 8%. Building on the lessons learned, its second fund is targeting 10%-15% IRR. Scarso says IRP.VC targets “equity-style returns in the high teens and above, per annum”. Meanwhile, Moby Dick Film Capital’s objective is to return a minimum of 2.5x investment over the 10-year lifespan of the fund. 

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