Lionsgate Entertainment

Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation (or Lionsgate) is an American entertainment company. The company was formed in Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 3, 1997, and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California. As of November 2013, it is the most commercially successful independent film and television distribution company in North America and the seventh most profitable movie studio.

History
Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation (LGE) was formed in 1997 by Frank Giustra with a $16 million investment including another $40 million from other investors including Keyur Patel and Yorkton Securities, an investment bank that specialized in funding mining ventures that Giustra was CEO. He then merged the company with Toronto Stock Exchange listed Beringer Gold Corp. (founded in 1986) to take the company public. Beringer's mining assets were soon sold off.

Lionsgate then began a series of acquisitions to get into the film industry. The company bought a number of small production facilities and distributors, starting with Montreal-based Cinépix Film Properties (renamed as Lions Gate Films) and North Shore Studios (renamed Lions Gate Studios) in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mandalay Television was acquired by LGE from Peter Guber for a 4% LGE stake. In 1998, LGE helped Guber form Mandalay Pictures with a 45% investment in Mandalay. Lionsgate followed that up with a June purchase of International Movie Group, Inc. (IMG), a bankrupt film distributor previously invested in by Guber and Yorktown Securities, for its film library. IMG's CEO Peter Strauss became president of Lions Gate Entertainment, Inc., its U.S. holding company. Lions Gate Media subsidiary was also formed to produce for television.

Completing its first year of operation, LGE had revenue of $42.2 million with loss of $397 thousand. The company share price dropped to a low of $1.40. This limited the corporation's ability to make acquisitions via stock swaps. Lions Gate instead made its next acquisition of Termite Art Productions, a reality-based television production company, for $2.75 million by issuing three convertible promissory notes. Giustra had the shareholders vote to move the company's public listing from the Toronto Stock Exchange to the American Stock Exchange, along with a two-for-one stock consolidation to qualify, for greater exposure that might boost share value.

In January 1999, Roman Doroniuk was named president and chief operating officers of LGE which led to the corporation's financial operations being moved in April to Doroniuk's offices in Toronto while corporate headquarters remained in Vancouver. LGE created US based Avalanche Films and acquired half of Sterling Home Entertainment, both in video sales. Again, Lionsgate registered losses in its second year of $9.3 million on revenues of $78.3 million with most of the losses were from its stake in Mandalay Pictures. Thus in the summer, LGE placed its studios up for sale with no buyers. TV operations were changed to non-network hour-long series over riskier network shows and ended its relationship with Mandalay Television. The corporation sought out more capital and cash with a filing of a preliminary prospectus for the sale of preferred stock and common stock warrants and a $13.4 million line of credit.

LGE Increases and new CEO
Additional acquisition funding arrived in January 2000 as a $33.1 million investment from an investor group that included Paul Allen, former Sony Pictures executive Jon Feltheimer, German broadcasting company Tele-Munchen, and SBS Broadcasting SA. This led to Feltheimer taking over as CEO from Giustra thus the passed over Doroniuk left the company. Feltheimer increased film making including several $1 million genre films at Avalanche. In June, LGE acquired Trimark Holdings, Inc. for approximately $50 million in stock and cash including taking on $36 million in debt.

Lions Gate continued making acquisitions during the decade to boost distribution and its film library. On December 15, 2003, LGE acquired Artisan Entertainment for $220 million. In 2004, Erik Nelson reacquired Termite Art and renamed it to Creative Differences.

Lions Gate partnered with Panamax Films in 2005 to make movies for the Latino market which only produced two films. On April 13, 2005, LGE spun-off its Canadian distribution unit into a new distribution unit called Maple Pictures under the direction of to former Lions Gate executives, Brad Pelman and Laurie May.On August 1, 2005, Lions Gate Entertainment acquired the entire library of Modern Entertainment, the U.S. film division of the Swedish television company Modern Times Group. On October 17, 2005, LGE acquired UK company Redbus Film Distribution for $35 million and became Lionsgate UK on February 23, 2006.

In March 15, 2006, Lionsgate sold Lionsgate Studios to Bosa Development Corporation.undefinedOn July 12, LGE purchased Debmar-Mercury, an independent television distributor, which will continue operations as a LGE subsidiary. The company agreed in August to lease term with New Mexico State Land Office and the city of Rio Rancho for a new 52.8 acres studio near Rio Rancho's under construction city center and arena.

In early 2007, Lionsgate bought a partial stake in independent film distribution company Roadside Attractions. Lionsgate started up Lionsgate Music by June 2007. On September 10, 2007, LGE bought Mandate Pictures for $56.3 million, $44.3 million in cash and $12 million in stock, and taking on $6.6 million of Mandate's debt. Mandate Chief Executive Joe Drake returned to the company as co-chief operating officer of its film unit.

By July 2008, Lionsgate has not made any progress on building its new film studio in Rio Rancho or on setting up the corporation to run the studio per its agreement with New Mexico. In January 2009, LGE purchased TV Guide Network and TVGuide.com from Macrovision Solutions for $255 million cash. In May 2009, LGE sold a 49% stake in TV Guide Network and website to One Equity Partners under pressure from shareholder Carl Icahn.

Lionsgate cut back its slate of films per year by four in February 2009. In April, Relativity Media signed with LGE for a 5 picture per year multi-year film distribution. In August, LGE signed with Redbox for a five-year same day release deal worth $158 million. Lionsgate, along with MGM and Paramount Pictures/Viacom, is also a co-owner of Epix, a pay TV movie channel which debuted on October 30.

In September 2010, Lionsgate and Televisa formed a Joint venture, Pantelion Films, to produce for the next five years eight to 10 films a year targeted for the U.S. Latino market.

They sold off their Canadian distribution unit, Maple Pictures in September 2011 to Alliance Films.

Lionsgate announced on January 13, 2012, that it had acquired Summit Entertainment, producers and distributors of the Twilight Saga films, for $412.5 million. The two companies have planned on merging since 2008. On October 6, 2012, Lions Gate Entertainment announced that Brian Goldsmith became the co-COO of the company and joining co-COO Steve Beeks. On November 18, 2012, Lionsgate announced it has passed over the $1 billion mark for the first time with the success of The Hunger Games and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2.

Distribution
The distribution of selected recent non-in-house films for pay-per-view and on-demand are under the supervision of NBCUniversal Television Distribution under Universal Pictures (Universal formerly held home video and television rights to many of the early Lionsgate films), while all others (particularly the in-house films) are distributed for both cable and broadcast television through Lionsgate's syndicated division.