By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Icahn’s Gate
He tried to take over the bloated Lionsgate many different ways. But company leadership and their board have had too good a time building the company to let Icahn come in and do what they haven’t be able to do… make it work for Wall Street.
And so they fought. They fought him off in every way possible. And when smart people get focused and the #1 focus of the organization is not being taken over by Carl Icahn, positive results can be achieved. And so they have.
Ironically, he was paid less that he was offering to pay for shares of the company. (I thought he’d hold out to get what he had offered others… but I guess he was done wasting his time trying to fight the immovable object.)
Now what?
Lionsgate is a moderately successful studio and distributor of feature films with aging franchise titles, a nice sized TV division and a massive, massive library. Like MGM, they value the company much higher internally than the market does. And so, the opportunity to cash out on a high has never taken place.
A movie or two may be a huge or bomb… it doesn’t really matter. The company is much bigger than any movie (unless they get a Twilight or an Avatar).
So after two years of defensive maneuvering and years before that of doggy paddling, what is the future of this company?
I don’t know. And I don’t think anyone else really knows.
It’s still a tweener. Anyone who would ever buy it for an acceptable price to the management would have to sell pieces of it off to make it work for them. And clearly, management doesn’t like that idea. So it needs to get bigger or smaller.
“Bigger” was a bit of a disaster last year. But they can keep trying. If I were them, I would get very serious about streaming their library and making that work beyond the EPIX relationship. Even though they have more library product (and their complete TV library, which Par splits with CBS), they are living in Paramount’s shadow there. There is finally a real advantage – since the dawn of DVD – to having a very ling tail. Use it. The more expensive movie business… not so much.
“Smaller” means selling off some of the acquired holdings. Could try spinning off TV. Could turn the library into a separate business. Could make the production side even smaller.
I guess time will tell…
Lionsgate is banking on the Hunger Games becoming the next big franchise, right? I don’t know if that is going to pan out. Lots of talk about how the teaser was a huge let down. It looked oddly low rent to me. It didn’t have that expensive sheen I typically associate with mid-budget and up films. It had the aura of a direct-to-dvd slasher flick, with the frightened girl running through cheap woods. Even a random clip from Supernatural has a more cinematic quality than the Hunger Games teaser, and that is low budget TV.
That’s sheer nonsense, Ms. Prince: there’s nothing in that clip the says low production values or any other negative. It clearly wasn’t intended as a “blow you away” action clip. And so what. Perhaps some 13-year-olds thought that the little tease should be boom-explosive.
Just wait for the movie, and then make an *informed* judgement.
participant42, it seems as if Madam Pince was just offering an opinion based on an observation. You may not share the opinion but couldn’t you offer your rebuttal without the attack mode? Heck, up the sarcasm or snark but I think any point you were trying to make was lost in your presentation.
Having seen many teens clustered around computer screens at school to watch that lackluster teaser…. I think it’ll do just fine.