Summit Backs Away from Pursuit of MGM

MGM is still on the market, having put itself up for sale in November. Since then, the studio has released one film: Hot Tub Time Machine, which barely made money. So if you're roughly $4 billion in debt, that's a bad sign.

There was a great development in all of this about a month ago, which we'll revisit shortly. But first, Deadline reports that Summit, one of the few remaining film companies looking at MGM, has taken a pass. The reason: "Summit is pulling out because the process has gone on way too long and it's become a distraction for the business." Sounds reasonable.

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Blockbuster Planning Mid-September Bankruptcy

It's not like we all haven't seen this coming for quite a while now, but Blockbuster is reportedly informing the six major studios that it plans to file bankruptcy next month.

The aim, according to The Los Angeles Times, is to use a planned five-month bankruptcy period to get out of the leases on 500 to 800 of its most in-the-red stores. After that, Blockbuster—which has made a habit of coming late to the party over the past decade or so—intends to expand its Redbox-alike kiosk partnership with NCR. They'll then take another stab at competing with Netflix and Video-On-Demand offerings such as Amazon's in the online streaming arena.

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Spyglass Entertainment Spies MGM

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Spyglass Entertainment is in serious talks to run MGM "after the struggling film studio finishes resturcturing a roughly $4 billion debt load later this summer."

Metro put itself up for sale in November, but nobody really wanted the studio, it's sparse slate of upcoming projects and its rich archive of thousands of films almost exclusively because there was, at the time $3.7 billion in outstanding debt to consider. A new owner would have had to work out a deal with lienholders for a little more than half that much to take over MGM. Now, however, it looks like the clouds are parting. MGM wouldn't have to declare bankruptcy, Spyglass would take a 4% stake in the company and combine its library with MGM's. As a financing company and not a studio, some of those moves might be tricky, so a lot of that depends on the deals Spyglass has with distributors for home video sales and that sort of thing.

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Relativity Buys Overture, Releasing 'Let Me In'

A rather interesting development late in the week is hitched to another rather interesting development. Dread Central reports that Let Me In -- from what we've seen it hews a little too close to the original, Let the Right One In -- wouldn't get released by Overture this fall. Apparently, the studio was trying to find other distributors interested in making a go of it here, because the expected P & A costs are too much to bear.

That would not be much of a story, frankly, because even the big studios combine forces from time to time. Overture has already sent out some marketing swag for the film (look at the bloody funnel in an evidence bag we received last week), so it's clearly not a case of not wanting to commit to the film, but probably a simple realization that with its more limited resources, Overture is better off cutting a deal and picking up a percentage of the grosses. But the interesting part is the announcement yesterday that Relativity Media has agreed to buy Overture. Variety says Relativity will release Let Me In, along with Overture's other completed works, Jack Goes Boating with Phil Hoffman and Stone with Robert DeNiro, but there's no word if that outside distribution is still in the cards. My guess is that this superseded all that and Relativity will push Let Me In very aggressively, having acquired some of Overture's staff in the process of all this.

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Disney Unloads Miramax for $650 Million

After a few suitors - the most recent a group involving Rob Lowe, which seems odd - Disney has reportedly decided to sell Miramax to construction executive Ronald Tutor and Colony Capital. The price, and here's the weird part, is estimated at $650 million.

That seems like a lot of money, but it's the same ballpark Harvey Weinstein's group offered for the studio a couple months back, only to be not just rebuffed by the House of Mouse, but completely removed from the table. Disney has not confirmed the deal, but it's believed that might happen later this month. If the words "construction executive" give you pause, Tutor is not expected to be involved day-to-day. Instead, his role will be that of the managing partner and largest shareholder, while others, presumably movie or entertainment folk, will run the shop. But what will they do with it? That's the question asked by media financier Steve Blume.

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