The New York Times ran a story about how movie studios are worth a lot less to their conglomerate owners than they used to be. One of the prime examples was MGM, the studio that controls half the James Bond franchise. An excerpt about the current bidding for MGM:
Time Warner, Lionsgate Entertainment and smaller private companies showed interest, but signaled offers of less than $2 billion — and perhaps as low as half that — for a company that was bought in 2004 for about $5 billion. So, if bids were in the $1 billion range, that’d be 20 percent of what the studio went for six years when billionaire Kirk Kerkorian sold it to a group that included Comcast and Sony.
The Times’ story, written by Michael Ciepley and Brooks Barnes has this omnious note:
Two people involved with the bidding, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of restrictions on the discussion of the process, said they believed virtually all of the final bids would require a bankruptcy filing that would allow any new owner to proceed without the old obligations.
In this case, the story notes provides these details about the old obligations:
MGM pays about $300 million a year in interest on a $3.7 billion loan and faces $1 billion in payments in June 2011. The rest of the loan is due the next year. MGM also has a $250 million line of credit that matures in April.
One again, the reason 007 fans care is MGM is Eon Productions’ partner in the Bond franchise. All of this is why 007’s future remains precarious at the moment.
To read the entire New York Times story, JUST CLICK HERE.
Filed under: James Bond Films | Tagged: Bond 23, James Bond Films, MGM, MGM's financial troubles putting Bond 23 in limbo, The New York Times | Leave a comment »