International Creative Management Inc. is in exclusive negotiations, but this time it’s with a city rather than an A-list star.
Last week, the Beverly Hills City Council voted to open discussions with the talent agency, which last year packed up and left the city for shiny new digs in Century City, along with rival talent goliath Creative Artists Agency Inc.
With Century City flexing its made-over muscle a bevy of new restaurants, an overhauled Westfield mall and a revamped Hyatt are among the draws Beverly Hills is actively trying to stem the westward migration of businesses and their sizeable tax revenues. City officials recently estimated that the exit of business like CAA and ICM costs the city more than $1 million a year.
ICM is subleasing its Century City office space from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., which downsized its operations after a coalition of private equity firms, Sony Corp. and Comcast Corp. purchased the studio in 2005. The agency is in the first year of a 12-year lease, worth an estimated $50 million, for three floors and 125,000 square feet in the MGM building.
ICM called Beverly Hills home for nearly 15 years. The company said it would explore a plan to develop its new headquarters in the city.
“At this time, there is no deal in place, and we are at the the earliest of stages,” according to an ICM statement.
It now has a four-month window to negotiate with the city and a development team about the city-owned 5-acre parcel on Foothill Road, which would be a build-to-suit with a maximum 55-year lease. The land was once designated for industrial use but was re-zoned in the 1990s as commercial property that now lies inside Beverly Hills’ Entertainment Business District, an area bounded by Santa Monica Boulevard, Burton Way, Civic Center Drive and Maple Drive.
Angeleno to Head AFI
Bob Gazzale was named head of the American Film Institute last week, becoming just the third person to head the institution since it’s creation by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967.
Gazzale, an L.A.-based film historian and multiple Emmy-nominated television producer and writer, has been a senior executive at AFI for 15 years. He will take the reins from Jean Picker Firstenberg, who announced she would retire at the end of AFI’s 40th anniversary celebration this fall. Gazzale will assume the office on Nov. 1.
Gazzale, 42, will have oversight and responsibility for all aspects of the film education and cultural organization, including AFI’s Conservatory, television productions, online and digital programs, and AFI’s film festivals and exhibition programs. Gazzale joined AFI in 1992 and for the past eight years has served as director of AFI Productions.
The search committee was comprised of AFI board chairs and vice chairs including Chairman Sir Howard Stringer, Jon Avnet, John F. Cooke, Mark Canton, Bob Daly, Rich Frank, Tom Pollock and John DiBiaggio. Neil Fink of Gunderson & Associates served as search consultant.
Orient Express
The Chinese calendar says otherwise, but Steamboat Ventures, the Walt Disney Co.’s venture capital arm, is hoping the year of the Mouse is coming to Asia.
The 7-year-old firm recently opened offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong and has taken stakes in three Chinese startups focused on Internet broadcasting including CTS Media, a Shanghai company that specializes in advertisements in streaming online video.
Steamboat Ventures, which launched a $175 million Asian fund last year, focuses on early- to mid-stage technology companies that are pursuing opportunities in emerging media and entertainment markets. Steamboat specializes in investments of $2 million to 10 million with a maximum of $20 million in any single company. The operation is “heavily focused on adding value by offering the combined resources of Steamboat Ventures and the Walt Disney Co.” and is actively involved with all of its portfolio companies, according to the fund’s Web site..
“Everybody is expecting China to be a major market once they get past copyright issues because it has huge potential and nobody can afford to ignore it. Disney is trying to get in early and learn how that game is played and get acquainted with the market,” said analyst Dennis McAlpine of McAlpine & Associates. Disney has been aggressively forming partnerships with foreign production companies with a particular focus on India, China, Russia, Latin America and South Korea.
Steamboat has a traditional venture structure: three funds with about $400 million under management and Disney as sole liability partner. Steamboat’s investments support Disney’s overall strategy, but the fund retains autonomy in individual deals.
Innovative Imagination
Imagination International Corp. just brought home a Stevie Award, an accolade bestowed at the annual American Business Awards, for “most innovative company up to 2,500 employees.”
Imagination specializes in interactive DVD games, which have had a sudden and significant impact on the games industry.
The L.A.-based game producer and distributor has been around for 23 years, and develops traditional games and puzzles, DVD and mobile phone games as well as interactive television and digital media production. In 2006, the company ranked as the market leader in the DVD games category with products available in 85,000 retail outlets worldwide, and with the top selling DVD game in the U.S. last year with “Deal or No Deal,” which sold 1.5 million units.
Staff reporter Anne Riley-Katz can be reached at
[email protected]
or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 225.
