Village Roadshow is late on payments to those writers working on their film and TV projects, we hear. As such the WGAW is bound to issue a stop work order to The Matrix franchise and Mad Max Fury Road co-financier and production company.
“Village Roadshow is late on paying its writers and a stop work order is imminent if they do not do what’s necessary,” said a WGAW spokesperson to Deadline this morning.
As seismic as that might seem, and the real pain some scribes are feeling this holiday season, it’s a temporary situation for Village Roadshow we hear as the label gets its house of cards in order to pay the people who’ve done the work already
What’s wrong? We understand the problem is with Village Roadshow’s majority stakeholder, Vine Alternative Investments, the specialized asset manager of $1.3 billion investments, who we’re told is having cash problems. As such, Village Roadshow is currently fielding offers for a new majority stake holder in its company which counts a half billion-plus library of film and TV titles, many co-shared with Warner Bros. Village Roadshow, which has also been behind such TV series as College Bowl With Peyton Manning and the USA Network Nash Bridges movie with Don Johnson.
Vine is comprised of Jim Moore, Managing Partner, Chief Executive Officer; Bill Lambert, Partner, Chief Investment Officer; and Stephen Kovach, Partner, Head of Business Origination.
Also not helping Village Roadshow is its continued arbitration with Warner Bros. over The Matrix Resurrections and the producer’s credit exclusion on several titles they share rights on. Village Roadshow has worked with Warner Bros on such movies as the Ocean‘s series, Ready Player One, I Am Legend among others. Village Roadshow sued Warners in February 2022 over the Burbank, CA lot’s decision to go theatrical day-and-date on streaming service Max with Matrix Resurrections which tanked at the box office with $37.6M domestic, $157.3M WW. Village Roadshow has historically funded 25% to 50% on a typical Warner Bros. production.
Back in October it was reported that the Steve Mosko led Village Roadshow cut eight staffers in business affairs, administration, as well as those in film and TV roles.
Signs that gray clouds were hovering over Vine were seen back in July when they offloaded a bulk of their non-Village Roadshow library to Shamrock Capital. That collection included more than 550 feature films and over 2,000 hours of TV shows and 450 songs. The acquisition brought Shamrock’s content-rights holdings to $2.4 billion spanning more than 1,000 films and 3,000 hours of TV, and in excess of 20,000 musical compositions.
Village Roadshow did not return request for comment.
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