Post by Admin on Jun 16, 2018 22:05:35 GMT
www.denofgeek.com/movies/cannon-films/27317/the-rise-and-fall-of-cannon-films
John Blythe • 5 years ago
Cannon's problems were similar to those of many of the independent film studios of the 1980's and early 1990's. They were primarily financed by Credit Lyonnais as was Empire Pictures, New World Pictures, Trans World, Hemdale Films, Gladden Entertainment, etc. When I was still at UCLA Film School, I did a lengthy power point presentation on Cannon and Credit Lyonnais predatory lending practices into the film industry at that time. At one point, I was fortunate to even get an interview with a former VP of Production who was at Cannon back then. Cannon's problem was that it not only wasted so much money on film productions and acquiring exhibitors such as Thorn EMI, it was just bad decisions on the part of Golan and Globus. By 1988, Cannon was in debt to a tune of nearly $600 million to CL, and Warner Bros. took distribution rights to some of its films. CL then brought in the Italian financier (and later convicted crook") Giancarlo Parretti who renamed Cannon Group to Pathe Communications. Golan and Globus fell out, with Golan leaving Cannon/Pathe to start 21st Century Films which was also financed by CL. Parretti started a new Cannon Pictures which was ran by Ovidio Assonitis and Chris Pearce and in 1990 somehow managed to convince CL to lend him nearly $1.6 billion for Pathe to take over the crippled MGM. When the takeover was completed, MGM-Pathe was almost immediately pushed into bankruptcy because Parretti had largely mismanaged the studio and Alan Ladd Jr. had to come in and reorganize the studio. Nonetheless, after MGM-Pathe collapsed, CL tried to conceal its bad loans by forcing companies like Cannon, 21st Century, Empire, Trans World, Epic, Hemdale, etc. to push them into bankruptcy, take the assets from those indie studios and put them into MGM, thus inflating MGM's balance sheet to make it look more attractable so that CL could get the bulk of its $1.3 billion back that it had loaned Parretti. It was a very interesting period in the film industry. Parretti, while convicted of fraud, felt the U.S. and is living in Italy. Several of the top bankers of CL, which finally went under in the late 1990's were also convicted of fraud and predatory lending. Interesting days and it explains what happened to so many of these old indie film studios we've come to love over the years!