BBC AND COBALT MEDIA GROUP IN £105M JOINT VENTURE

THE BBC have struck a £105 million deal with film finance outfit Cobalt Media Group in a bid to produce more home grown higher budget movies.
Announcing the deal at the Cannes film festival last week, BBC director of film, drama, entertainment, Alan Yentob said the financing would propel BBC Films from an ad hoc producer of largely lower-budget pictures into “one of the pre-eminent players in international feature film production”.
Yentob said the deal would help the UK to retain some of its home-grown film making talent, a proportion of which has traditionally been trained by the BBC. He added: “Alongside this venture we will continue to make smaller budget films like Billy Elliot and Iris, which is currently on production.”
‘Billy Elliot’, coproduced by BBC Films has grossed more than £69 million worldwide.
The new deal is expected to give the BBC Films-Cobalt 50-50 joint venture access to a three-year production fund of £105 million, which will be used to produce pictures with budgets of over £8.5 million.
Cobalt - formerly known as MM Media Capital Partners - is expected to handle international distribution, as the partnership does not have the backing of a major Hollywood studio.
Although the joint venture’s first project has yet to be announced, the deal comes as some of the bigger Hollywood players are looking to the UK in a bid to exploit Britain's recently extended tax-breaks for film production.
Cobalt, which changed their name from MM Media Capital Partners in April, are a London and LA-based film-financing outfit with an annual lending capacity of around £635 million.
In the past 18 months the company have financed films such as ‘Chicken Run’ and ‘The World is Not Enough’. (AMcE)