Sergio Leone Estate Launching IPO Of Leone Film Group

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http://www.deadline.com/2013/12/global-showbiz-briefs-35/#more-653783

Sergio Leone Estate Launching IPO Of Leone Film Group
alamogoodbadugly_8The heirs of spaghetti Western maestro Sergio Leone are planning an IPO of the Leone Film Group to kick off Wednesday. The company is eyeing a listing on Milan’s small-cap market and, according to The Wall Street Journal, is hoping to raise about €17M with a sale of a 20% stake. The move is designed to help expand the company’s 400-title film library, its own production output and to sign more distribution agreements with U.S. filmmakers. The group has a deal with DreamWorks and also has picked up such recent titles as Ron Howard’s Rush and Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street. Leone’s heirs, Andrea and Raffaella, are also looking to pitch their father’s brand to a younger audience. The pair has bought back rights to most of Leone’s movies and is now looking to make deals for spaghetti western-style areas in U.S. theme parks, the Journal report says.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sergio-leone-film-group-stock-666539

[drinkanddestroy]

thanks for sharing that.

here is The Wall Street Journal article

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304477704579254132205853384


The Good, the Bad and the IPO
Family Owners of Famous 'Spaghetti Westerns' to Float Shares This Week in Milan

By Manuela Mesco

Updated Dec. 16, 2013 3:56 p.m. ET


MILAN—The owners of some of the most famous "spaghetti western" classics are looking for their own fistful of dollars.

The heirs of late Italian director Sergio Leone —who invented the spaghetti-western genre and made films such as "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," "A Fistful of Dollars" and "Once Upon a Time in America"— will take their father's company public this week in Milan, with a plan to stake out a bigger chunk of the Italian film industry and revive their father's name.

Mr. Leone, known for his intense close-ups and laconic one-liners, became an icon for a generation of younger directors such as Quentin Tarantino, who in his 2012 film "Django Unchained" emulated the kinetic violence and flamboyant style that the Italian westerns pioneered.

His 1960s films launched the big-screen career of Clint Eastwood, who became famous for his roles as Blondie or the Man with No Name. Previously, Mr. Eastwood was largely known for his long-running part in the TV series "Rawhide."

In 1984, Mr. Leone returned to the spotlight with "Once Upon a Time in America," starring Robert De Niro, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

After his death in 1989, Mr. Leone's children, Andrea and Raffaella, built his company, Leone Film Group, into an independent film distribution and production company with a 400-title library. The group has brought to Italy several American blockbusters, including "Rush" and "Traffic," and has the exclusive rights to distribute the films of Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese and DreamWorks Distribution Co. in Italy. According to the contracts, the rights also include proceeds from DVDs, home videos and TV rights associated with those titles.

The Leone heirs are launching the IPO to raise funds to broaden the company's film library, make more distribution agreements with U.S. filmmakers and expand its own movie production. They plan to sell a 20% stake in the company through a public listing slated for Wednesday. Because the company is quite small—bankers value it at just €75 million ($103 million)—it will be listed with Milan's small-cap stocks. The Leone heirs hope to raise about €17 million in fresh cash through the placement.

The Leones also hope that growth in the company will help them fund another, somewhat quixotic pursuit: pitching their father's famous brand to a younger audience.

The siblings have bought back the rights to most of their father's films over the years, but have so far done little with them. Indeed, just a fraction of the company's €13 million in revenue stems from their father's body of work. The bulk comes from distributing Italian titles and American blockbusters in Italy.

Now, they hope to strike deals for spaghetti western-style areas in U.S. theme parks and develop a videogame inspired by "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." They also are trying to develop the last screenplay written by Mr. Leone before he died in 1989, together with David Franzoni, an Oscar-winner screenwriter who worked on "The Gladiator."

"We want to show the financial world how much the cinema industry is worth also outside the U.S.," says Andrea Leone.

It won't be a simple task, as the genre peaked nearly 50 years ago. "Cowboy films are just not popular at the moment," says David Nicholas Wilkinson, chairman of Guerrilla Films Ltd., a U.K. independent distributor and film industry consultant. "The spaghetti-western brand is an extremely good one, but…I'm unsure whether young people would be interested."

Only a handful of filmmakers' families around the world have been able to pursue a similar path because rights to a film are typically held by studios, not the directors. George Lucas is a rare exception. He controlled virtually all rights to his six "Star Wars" movies, and a number of licensed products based on them, before selling his company, Lucasfilm, to Walt Disney Co. last year for $4 billion.

Lucasfilm made about $25 billion in consumer sales world-wide over about 30 years, by selling toys, books and various merchandise in more than 100 countries. It also has a global program of Star Wars museum exhibitions.

Leone is one of a rush of small Italian companies seeking a listing at a time when bank financing is increasingly scarce due to the crisis in Italy. The Italian stock market says that more than 100 companies are considering a listing, including small fashion houses and even a Milan jazz club, Jazz Blue Note.

—Ben Fritz contributed to this article.

Write to Manuela Mesco at manuela.mesco@wsj.com

[drinkanddestroy]

and here is The Hollywood Reporter article

(note the second paragraph: Leone invented the "spaghetti western" genre with such films as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in America." I never knew OUATIA was a spaghetti western. but hey, you learn something new every day...)

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sergio-leone-film-group-stock-666539


Sergio Leone Film Group Stock Rises in Italian Market Debut
3:05 AM PST 12/18/2013 by Georg Szalai

The late director invented the "spaghetti western" genre with such films as “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

LONDON – Leone Film Group, the company that owns the movies of late Italian director Sergio Leone, made its stock market debut in Milan on Wednesday.

Leone invented the "spaghetti western" genre with such films as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in America. And he helped launch the film career of Clint Eastwood. Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained paid tribute to the genre.

As of 11:30 a.m. Milan time, the stock of Leone Film Group was up 1.9 percent at $ 6.72 (4.89 euros).

Leone's children Andrea and Raffaella now run the company, which he had founded before his death in 1989. LFG manages a library of 400 titles and produces and distributes Italian and foreign films in Italy.

This year, the company distributed Ron Howard's Formula One drama Rush, and it is also distributing Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street in the country. It has an exclusive relationship with Dreamworks Distribution that brings releases to Italy.

The siblings have in recent years bought back the rights to many of their father’s movies and also hope to bring them to new audiences. The Wall Street Journal reported that they are, for example, hoping to reach deals for spaghetti western-style areas in U.S. theme parks and create a video game inspired by The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

And they are looking to develop their father's last screenplay, which he put together with David Franzoni, according to the Journal, but it didn't provide further details.

"We have lived and breathed cinema since we were born, but we have always had an eye on the business side," Andrea Leone told Reuters recently.

He and his sister have said that LFG in 2014 and 2015 wants to distribute 12-13 films each and co-produce more Italian films shot in the U.S.
The IPO proceeds will go towards adding to the firm's library and movie production and strike additional distribution deals with U.S. partners.

LFG had $22.8 million (16.6 million euros) in revenue in 2012. The IPO comes at a time when various smaller Italian firms are eyeing a stock market listing amid a difficult environment for bank financing in the country.

E-mail: Georg.Szalai@THR.com
Twitter: @georgszalai

[drinkanddestroy]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sergio-leone-film-group-stock-666539

.......

And they are looking to develop their father's last screenplay, which he put together with David Franzoni, according to the Journal, but it didn't provide further details.

Which screenplay is that?

In the last chapter of STDWD, Frayling discusses some projects Leone had been kicking around at the time he died.

Would it be the one on Leningrad? Frayling says Leone had no script for that except the opening scene and closing scene.

Frayling also mentioned something about a story that was vaguely similar to GBU, called something like "A Place Only Mary Knows" or sumthin like that, about buried treasure during the Civil War. He also mentioned that for quite a number of years, Leone had a script (not sure if it was completed) called sumthin like "Viale Gloriso" about his childhood (but he later said that there was no point in filming it once Amarcord had been made). [UPDATE - SEE CORRECTION TWO POSTS DOWN http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/forums/index.php?topic=11871.msg169105#msg169105 ] There was also talk of working on a tv miniseries, with Sergio Donati, called Colt, following a single gun around, and showing the history of the West through the eyes (or barrel?) of that gun.

I wish the author of that article had at least provided the name of the screenplay; I'm sure that whatever it is, it's mentioned in that last chapter of STDWD

maybe we gotta contact that author - his contact info is on bottom of the article I pasted - and see if he has any more info on that...

[drinkanddestroy]

Which screenplay is that?

In the last chapter of STDWD, Frayling discusses some projects Leone had been kicking around at the time he died.

...

He also mentioned that for quite a number of years, Leone had a script (not sure if it was completed) called sumthin like "Viale Gloriso" about his childhood (but he later said that there was no point in filming it once Amarcord had been made).

I just double-checked STDWD, and realized that while the last chapter of STDWD indeed discusses some projects Leone was kicking around at the time he died,  my comment above about "Viale Glorioso" contains a few mistakes: This particular mention of "Viale Glorioso" does not appear in the last chapter of STDWD, but in the beginning (pp.12-13 to be precise); the movie that Leone felt made "Viale Glorioso" redundant was not Amarcord, but another Fellini movie, called I Vitelloni (1953); and it was in the mid-1960's (rather than just before he died) that Leone abandoned his desire to make "Viale Glorioso" into a movie.

Here is the passage on pp. 12-13 of STDWD:

In the end, it was not until the mid-1960's that Leone finally abandoned the project of realizing the autobiographical project of his youth. He told an interviewer, 'I found again, in my bottom drawer, a scenario written nearly twenty years before which I'd called Viale Glorioso... Alas! Someone had had the same idea, and had already made an excellent film out of it: Federico Fellini's I Vitteloni.*

* Frayling's footnote at this point gives credit to pp. 30-32 of Gilles Lambert's Les bons, les sales, les merchants et les propres de Sergio Leone; and pp. 21-23 of Noel Simsolo's Conversations avec Sergio Leone.

[emmo26]

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