The Hollywood Reporter - 12.02.2020

Deal

of the

Week

Big

Deal

7 Days of DEALS

Who’s inking on the dotted line this week

The Report

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 26 FEBRUA RY 12, 2020

BLAVATNIK: GREGG DEGUIRE/GETTY IMAGES. LIZZO: EMMA MCINTYRE/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE RECORDING ACADEMY. LOVATO: CINDY ORD/GETTY IMA

GES.

SNOWPIERCER

: JUSTINA MINTZ/TURNER. BOOKS: COURTESY OF

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The Only Black Girls in Town (LITTLE BROWN, MARCH 10)

BY Brandy Colbert AGENCY ICM Partners

The veteran YA novelist’s latest follows Alberta, who is used to

being the only black girl in her small surf town, after Brooklyn

transplant Edie moves into the local bed-and-breakfast. Together

they discover the shocking and painful secrets of their burg.

Rights Available! Hot new books with Hollywood appeal BY MIA GALUPPO

FILM

Sam Raimi (CAA, Hansen

Jacobson) is in talks to

replace Scott Derrickson

as director of Doctor

Strange in the Multiverse of

Madness, with Loki series

creator Michael Waldron

(LBI, Goodman Genow)

joining as a new writer.

Ice Cube (WME, Prospect

Park, Ziffren Brittenham)

will star in cinematographer

Rachel Morrison’s feature

directorial debut, Flint

Strong, Universal’s adapta-

tion of boxing documentary

T- R e x.

Maggie Gyllenhaal (WME,

MGMT) will play Elvis

Presley’s mother in Baz

Luhrmann’s untitled Warner

Bros. biopic.

Grammy-nominated

music video director Matt

Stawski (Gersh, Writ Large,

Weintraub Tobin) will helm

a Monster Mash musical

adaptation for Universal.

After Parasite’s four wins
at the Academy Awards,
Hollywood has one ques-
tion for its history-making
filmmaker: What now?
Bong Joon Ho (WME, Jerome Duboz,
Cohen & Gardner) is writing two features
— one in Korean, one in English — that he
began developing long before the awards
frenzy for his latest. “Regardless of what
happened at Cannes and Oscars, I had
been working on two projects before then,”
he said backstage at the Feb. 9 ceremony.
Bong’s plans are much more solid on
the American TV side. TNT’s adaptation
of Snowpiercer, his 2013 English-language

Director Bong’s Post-Oscar Moves Take Shape

debut, will finally leave the station

May 31 after a wild five-year journey

that included a showrunner change and

reshooting the entire pilot. Bong was

added to the series as an exec producer

this year and is said to have visited the set,

but was not involved in any of the creative.

Sources say Bong will be involved along-

side Adam McKay in the Parasite limited

TV series for HBO (which beat out Netflix

for the rights). A script for the series and

casting discussions have yet to begin,

but Bong called the project an “expanded

film” that he had begun envisioning while

writing the eventual best picture winner.

“There were so many stories I thought of

that could happen between the sequences

you see in the film and background stories

for each character,” he told THR on Jan. 21.

“I wanted to explore those ideas freely with

a five- or six-hour film.” — LESLEY GOLDBERG

AND MIA GALUPPO

BEHIND WARNER MUSIC GROUP’S IPO:

WHY NOW, AND WHAT’S NEXT?

The last time Warner Music Group went public, in

2005, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page played the guitar

riffs from “Whole Lotta Love” during the opening

bell at the New York Stock Exchange. What will

WMG do for an encore this time — and why now?

WMG’s Feb. 6 filing for an IPO came as Wall

Street analysts project that the music industry will

double in size over the next 10 years, thanks in part

to streaming’s rejuvenating effect. The Dec. 31 sale

of a 10 percent stake in Universal Music Group to

Chinese conglomerate Tencent valued the industry-

leading music company at $34 billion, and given

that valuation and WMG’s comparative revenues,

Billboard estimates that the latter company is worth

$10 billion to $16 billion.

Regardless of the exact valuation, owner Len

Blavatnik, whose Access Industries bought WMG

in 2011 for $3.3 billion, is expected to enjoy quite a

return, especially since he paid only $1 billion in

cash and financed the rest with debt. And Blavatnik

has taken $1.35 billion out of WMG in dividends and

management and consultant fees, which means he

already has made some $300 million on his invest-

ment. An IPO will bring in more cream.

A valuation also would come in handy if his real

goal is to sell the company — in the weeks just

before the IPO filing, there were rumors that a

Middle Eastern investment group had made an offer

to buy WMG. “Going through the motions of doing

a stock offering when a suitor is negotiating to buy

is a classic M&A tactic to line up a stalking horse to

help set pricing,” says one Wall Street veteran.

But if WMG does go public, it has nearly $3 billion

in debt (up from $2.2 billion in 2011 at the time of

Access’ acquisition), and its prospectus notes that

its existing debt and revolving credit facility give

the company the ability to take on even more. So

while the company says it plans on making regular

dividend payments, prospective shareholders may

have concerns about how their dividends could be

impacted by debt service payments and debt pay-

backs. Cautions one analyst, who estimates the debt

could take 10 to 20 years to pay off: “That’s a valid

question for shareholders to ask: Is WMG going to

pay down debt or pay dividends?” — ED CHRISTMAN

Blavatnik LovatoDemi

Bong Joon Ho is an EP on TNT’s Snowpiercer.

Lizzo is among

the Warner

Music Group

artists who

could become

assets touted

to Wall Street.

Creatures (ALGONQUIN BOOKS, JAN. 7)

BY Crissy Van Meter AGENCY WME

Set on a small island off the California coast, Van Meter’s debut is

a coming-of-age story that follows a soon-to-be bride dealing with

a groom possibly lost at sea, her estranged mother’s unexpected

reappearance and a dead whale in the harbor.