MUMBAI: Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison’s son David Ellison has raised $350 million to co-finance films with Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures.
The funds valuing $150 million in equity and a four-year $200-million revolving credit facility led by JPMorgan Chase will enable Ellison to step up production at Skydance Productions, his production house.
Ellison hopes to make four to six films a year at his 4-year-old Santa Monica-based production company. Skydance will focus on big-budget action, adventure, science fiction and fantasy films as well as modestly budgeted comedies and genre pictures. In turn, Paramount will have first dibs on all of Skydance‘s projects in development, with the opportunity to co-finance and distribute films that the company produces.
Paramount‘s first big-budget film that Ellison will co-finance are the by Brad Bird directed Mission: Impossible 4 that stars Tom Cruise, True Grit starring Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and Jeff Bridges and an untitled film starring Chris Pine. Skydance is also co-developing License to Steal, an action heist movie with Paramount. The film, about the high-end repo business, will be produced with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.
Ellison has a number of moderately budgeted projects in development including an untitled comedy written by David Caspe starring Charlize Theron and Hyde based on the Dark Horse comic The Strange Case of Hyde that is being adapted for the big screen by Cole Haddon and produced with Mark Gordon and Dark Horse Entertainment.
