Alcon Media Group’s $417.5m offer has won out in bidding for the Village Roadshow Entertainment Group (VREG) library, making Alcon the owner of what it says is one of the biggest independent film libraries in the world.
The deal includes Village Roadshow’s entire library of intellectual properties, distribution rights and cash flows.
The library contains 108 features, including rights and royalties to the films Village Roadshow co-produced and co-financed with Warner Brothers Pictures since 1997, among them Mad Max: Fury Road, the Ocean’s Eleven series, The Matrix trilogy, Joker, Ready Player One and Wonka. The library is said to generate an estimated $50m annually.
Village Roadshow’s assets also include a development slate of films and scripted and unscripted television series.
VREG (which is separate from the Australia-based Village Roadshow Group) filed for bankruptcy protection in March, after which several companies entered the running to acquire the assets. Alcon’s ‘stalking horse’ bid was initially approved in April, though a US judge gave other interested parties until May 16 to submit higher bids. The Alcon bid was finally approved by the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on Wednesday (June 18).
The deal adds the VREG titles to Alcon’s own library, which includes Blade Runner 2049, The Blind Side, Insomnia, Prisoners and the recently rebooted Garfield franchise.
Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove, co-CEOs of Alcon Media Group and its production and financing group Alcon Entertainment, said: “We are pleased to acquire Village Roadshow’s library of major studio distributed feature films, which are accretive to Alcon’s existing film library. We intend to continue to be opportunistic in the future as other attractive assets become available in the marketplace.”
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