Australian production company and Warner Brothers financing partner, Village Roadshow Productions has recently been unable to pony up funds on the last four films it has partnered in with WB (two of them being upcoming films called “Sherlock Holmes” and “Where the Wild Things Are”). Time Warner released the information in its quarterly earnings report. Warners basically now has to cover the $120 million in costs themselves.
Roadshow has been co-financing with Warners since 1998. The partnership highest profile by-product is the “Matrix” franchise. The four films it was to have helped finance, but couldn’t, were “Get Smart,” “Gran Torino,” “Nights in Rodanthe” and “Yes Man.”
According to Village Roadshow, they are currently in the process of restructuring their debt in order to secure a new line of credit. They hope to get the new line of credit up and running as soon as the next two weeks.
Time Warner didn’t seem too concerned about the potential loss of their valuable partner, and made it clear they would continue to finance films on their own if the economic climate continued to wound smaller companies in their official statement. “This is a temporary restructuring issue and we fully expect our partner to ultimately secure funding. At the end of the day, we make movies with partners and we make movies without partners. This is simply an issue of the times we’re in.” Times continue to be tough for everyone and frankly, it sucks. The movie industry, despite all the claims to the contrary, is not recession proof. We’d like to hear some good economic news for once. It’s getting even bleaker out there. [Variety]
