19 October, 2005
By Staff Reporter
Source: Mipcom Daily News
ContentFilm already occupies a niche as a production, sales and financing company based in London, with strong ties to the US film industry, and plans to further exploit that niche by combining forces with newly-acquired television distribution company Fireworks International.
July of this year saw the acquisition of London-based Fireworks International by ContentFilm, a company formed by the merger of ContentFilm Inc., a US corporation and Winchester Entertainment.
John Schmidt, CEO of ContentFilm, said the acquisition marked a further step towards the company’s long-term goal of building a significant catalogue of feature film and television properties, as well as creating an effective sales company working within the international marketplace. With the addition of the Fireworks library, ContentFilm now controls over 100 feature films and 240 television programmes, and we have added Greg Phillips, his team, and the Fireworks brand to the existing business of ContentFilm International, run by Jamie Carmichael,” Schmidt said.
Theatrical titles on Content’s current slate include recent Toronto premiere, Thank You For Smoking, starring Aaron Eckhardt, Robert Duval, Kaite Holmes, and Adam Brodie; the Cannes Festival hit, Transamerica, with Felicity Huffman; the Sundance – and Oscar-nominated hit – The Cooler, staring William H. Macy, Maria Bello and Alec Baldwin; and Undertow, the feature from the highly acclaimed director David Gordon Green, staring Jamie Bell, Josh Lucas and Delmot Mulroney. The company recently acquired the latest Paul Verhoeven film, Black Book. With the acquisition of Fireworks complete, ContentFilm intends to continue its strategy of acquiring, managing and exploiting additional motion picture and television libraries.
Schmidt says the change in focus is a natural evolution for the company. “We’ve always been interested in content and building copyright ownership in whatever form since the company launched in 2001. “The production strategy for us required elaborate capital structures based on tax-driven opportunities, and those opportunities were chocked off in the independent sector last year. We weren’t making money at it, so we re-evaluated our business mode and emphasised the rights management and sales side of our businesses.
Fireworks has a diverse and strong library of action-adventure, drama, kids live-action, mini-series, TV movies and feature films, says Schmidt, adding: “It also has a strong organisation in Greg Phillips and his team – Saralo MacGregor, Kathryn Rice, Victoria Ryan, Clare Weatherill, Karen Sheard and Diana Zakis. We felt comfortable with Greg and knew he could realise on the value of the existing assets and build new business opportunities going forward.”
Meanwhile Schmidt expects ContentFilm’s existing library to perform well in the international television marketplace. “Feature films make up a desirable part of broadcast schedules and in the past few years the addition of multiple genre-specific pay-TV channels is providing additional opportunities,” he says. And ContentFilm is now looking beyond television to other platforms. “The success of a television series does not stop with the sales to an international broadcaster, and we’re keen to exploit all possible revenue streams, including mobile and broadband,” Schmidt said. “The interactive content side of programming, and more recently mobile content, has grown dramatically and can either pull in the viewer from day one or can grow naturally with the programme – wither way, we’re keen to utilise this revenue stream should the right property present itself.”
The company also has plans to strengthen its licensing and merchandising division which currently handles several properties for the pre-school and children’s entertainment market such as Bounty Hamster and the musical series Wheels On The Bus.
