Lionsgate Vice Chair Michael Burns said the company is set to split in two by year end with a first step in early April as the studio merges with a SPAC and starts to trade separately from Starz on the Nasdaq under the stock symbol LION. For tax reasons, the parent company will retain 87% of the studio stock at first, along with all of Starz, and the plan is fully separate the studio from Starz by the end of 2024, he told investors at Tuesday’s Morgan Stanley media conference.
Starz Adds 200K DTC Streaming Customers
Starz, the premium cable network and streaming provider set for separation from Lionsgate’s balance sheet early next year, added 200,000 domestic OTT subscribers from July through September, according to the parent company’s fiscal Q2 report.
Starz, the premium network and streaming service that will soon be its own publicly traded company, is laying off more than 10% of employees and is exiting Australia and the U.K. Starz CEO Jeffrey Hirsch announced the news in an email to staff obtained by CNBC on Friday. Starz has about 670 employees. He also addressed staff in a companywide town hall.
Sofia Chang has been appointed executive vice president, chief distribution officer at Starz, announced Alison Hoffman, Starz’s president of domestic networks, on Tuesday. Chang will oversee all of the streaming platform’s sales activities with multichannel video and digital distributors in the U.S. She’ll be based out of the New York office and will report to Hoffman.
Exclusives
Starz is promoting Darren Nielson to executive vice president of international networks. His promotion comes as Superna Kalle, president of Starz international networks to whom Nielson previously reported, has announced she is stepping down. She will remain with the company until March.
Lionsgate today confirmed today that it remains on track to separate Starz and its studio business despite volatile markets, noting that it’s now focusing on spinning off the studio, instead of the other way around. “As negotiations progress we have increased our focus on the possibility of spinning our studio business, creating a number of financial and strategic benefits. In that regard, we are continuning productive negotiations with prospective strategic and financial partners on both sides of our business,” the company said in an SEC filing Wednesday. It said it remains on a path to complete a transaction despite “volatile market conditions.”
Lionsgate confirmed Thursday that it is looking to spin off Starz and said it should have a deal in place by the end of the summer, with closure occurring by the end of this year. “We are engaged in a robust and productive process with our bankers and a number of potential strategic and financial partners,” Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer told equity analysts during Lionsgate’s fiscal 4Q earnings call. Roku, Apollo Global, Canal Plus and DirecTV are all bidders.
Roku Inc. has teamed with private-equity firm Apollo Global Management to bid for a minority stake in the pay TV and streaming service Starz, which is known for series like Outlander and Power, according to people familiar with the situation.
Lionsgate says it’s exploring options for Starz is news that is sure to heat up the M&A rumor mill. The company made the announcement in an SEC filing as it reported quarterly earnings Thursday.
“If you are working on commercials or for HBO, Showtime, Starz, Cinemax, BET or another company that has a contract still in effect – you must keep working,” IATSE informed its members. “You will not be a scab!” (Image: HBO; IATSE; BET)
Starz wants Disney to change the name of its upcoming Latin America streaming service, Star+. The Lionsgate-owned network filed copyright infringement lawsuits against Disney in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Starz is arguing that the name of Disney’s forthcoming streaming service is too similar with Starz, particularly its own streaming service StarzPlay, which operates in 58 countries worldwide and has been available in Latin America since 2019.
The news comes as the show is currently in production on Season 6, which was supposed to begin last year but was delayed due to the pandemic. Season 7 of the popular series will be based on the seventh book in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, An Echo in the Bone. It will consist of 12 episodes.
Starz has named Christina Davis to lead its original programming team. Davis, a producer and former CBS executive, will be president original programming at the premium cable outlet. She fills the post formerly held by Carmi Zlotnik, who departed in January after a decade and signed an exclusive producing deal at Apple soon after that.
Alison Hoffman, chief marketing officer at Starz, has been promoted to the newly created role of president, domestic networks. Hoffman will assume some of the operational oversight that Jeffrey Hirsch had a COO, before he was named president and CEO of the premium network in September.
