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Hedge fund buys Terminator rights: Now what?
In the popular consciousness, it would seem that the only force more nefarious than Skynet is a hedge fund, so it comes as huge irony that Pacificor has outbid Lionsgate and Sony Pictures for the rights to the Terminator franchise.
We won't bore you with the details, but the hedge fund prevailed in an auction of the rights by Halcyon Holding Corp., which had been pushed into bankruptcy by the very fund that ended up winning the rights, according to Deadline Hollywood:
Halcyon Holding Corp accepted the $29.5 million bid from, of all parties, the debtholder which pushed it into bankruptcy, Santa Barbara-based hedge fund Pacificor. (This is the same Pacificor whom Halcyon accused in a lawsuit of extortion, bribery, and fraud and demanded $30M in damages.)
So now that the auction is over, what does this mean for the beloved franchise?
As the deal is subject to approval by the federal bankruptcy court handling Halcyon's case, not much, at least in the short term.
It's likely that the case will be tied up in court for at least a while. "I suspect that Terminator will be something so tied up in legal red tape and rights that we won't see another film for a long, long time," Cinematical writes.
Also, while Lionsgate was reportedly planning to reboot the franchise, what the hedge fund wants to do is anyone's guess.
Since Pacificor isn't exactly a known quantity in the film business, how it will proceed is a mystery. What studio will want to partner up with a firm that's been sued by its last Hollywood partner for extortion? And without a Hollywood partner, how will a hedge fund produce a movie?
One possibility: foreign partners. Maybe the Russian mafia? Or Chinese triads? (We're kidding.)
And will it go forward with movies? Turn the franchise into a TV series again? Sock puppets?
Stay tuned ...
By IronOre at 1:34 PM ON 02/09/10
Kinky.
By Vadra at 1:51 PM ON 02/09/10
Whats this "beloved franchise" crap? The last two films (and TV series) couldn't get enough punters watching to make it worthwhile. If there's going to be any more Terminator (and I was hoping there wouldn't be) then it'll have to go back to its low-budget roots.
By TOK-732 at 2:06 PM ON 02/09/10
Do not worry guys! The next Terminator will be released in 4D format on April 21, 2011... ;-)
Will be Episode 1: Dancing with nukes.
By Danjack at 2:33 PM ON 02/09/10
Cool. This should be interesting. Hopefully, this will not end up being a reboot, but a sequel to the last one eith more character moments.
By connor1138 at 2:52 PM ON 02/09/10
You misused irony.
By ed davis at 3:42 PM ON 02/09/10
the tv show will be thought more of over time imo, the 3rd and 4th movie will be forgotten due to the bad writing. the 4th one had a bad story and not much character development.
By UnRiel at 4:13 PM ON 02/09/10
Use Prince as inspiration, the franchise formerly known as Terminator
By Mark at 6:54 PM ON 02/09/10
T3 and T4 weren't that good. I'd say hold off on a movie for a while. Give T:SCC a direct-to-dvd movie or something for now.
By divephotog at 7:16 PM ON 02/09/10
If it goes through, they can 'hedge' against us seeing any bad continuations of the series for a while, and then in some far future date make a good profit off it's resale to a studio to resurrect it (hopefully for our grandkids, as we have seen enough of it). -kh
By oneeye at 8:41 PM ON 02/09/10
sigh can this franchise be hurt anymore?
By Killian at 12:07 AM ON 02/10/10
This is right up there on my list next to companies holding patents that produce nothing.
Pacificor investor = "yeah, I got some funds I need to clean and get access to some big stars" LOL!
By bf at 1:22 AM ON 02/10/10
Can we get more TSCC and some more John and Cameron goodness!!! Jameron all the way.
By Pointer Obvious at 2:56 AM ON 02/10/10
Why do I feel half of the comments here didn't actually understand the article. A _hedge fund_ with no experience producing movies or television now owns the rights to Terminator. This is not a "oh, sweet!" moment or a moment to bring out your fan rewrites of the last films or petitions to bring back TSCC. This is a WTF?!? moment.
My guess is you're going to have to see this "asset" bought by someone else before anything gets remotely close to development.
By Nyarlathotep at 3:26 AM ON 02/10/10
do a proper fracking war movie with thousands of endoskeleton legions, blood and guts and war horror. In other words - do it like a band of brothers episode.
and the first three films sucked. but then cameron-lovers are everywhere so its no surprise the sheep love those weak-ass action flicks.
By TheGigaShadow at 12:56 PM ON 02/10/10
Pointer Obvious, it seems you are the only one who gets it. This is a sad day regardless of what you thought of the last couple of films. Meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised to find this hedge fund exists because someone, somewhere got bilked out of a lot of money.
By Son of a Maui Portagee at 1:05 PM ON 02/12/10
@TheGigaShadow
Well, I think it is sad and ironic that the rights were acquired in what should only be described as a hostile takeover. However, I think you and Pointer Obvious are conveniently ignoring the fact hat Halcyon was pretty much formed solely to acquire the rights and had just as much inexperience in film/television producing.
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Son of a Maui Portagee:
@TheGigaShadow Well, I think it is sad and ironic that the rights were acquired in what should only be described a...More »