MGM watch: Spyglass deal may be moving forward; would who distribute 007 films?

A deal where Spyglass Entertainment ends up running Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., which controls half of the James Bond franchise, may be moving forward. Here’s the start of a Bloomberg.com story by Michael White:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. signed a non-binding letter of intent to hand over management of the film studio to Spyglass Entertainment Group’s Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, a person with knowledge of the situation said.

Lenders to MGM, which owes more than $3.7 billion, have endorsed the plan, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the agreement isn’t public.

You can read the entire story BY CLICKING RIGHT HERE.

Meanwhile, assuming the MGM-Spyglass deal happens, there may be a competition among studios to actually release future Bond films because Spyglass would turn MGM into strictly a maker of movies. Here’s part of a Mike Fleming story on the Deadline Web site:

The situation on 007 will be more feverish. Warner Bros, Sony Pictures Entertainment and 20th Century Fox are the obvious outlets, but don’t count out Paramount. That studio has been co-financing partners with Spyglass on Star Trek and the upcoming sequel. That has grown into a strong relationship. I’m told that Paramount is making an aggressive push to win that franchise, much the way that it captured the Marvel Entertainment deal before that enterprise was sold to Disney.

You can read the entire Deadline story CLICKING HERE.