DreamWorks locks up financing for its films

Fourteen months after striking a partnership with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Big Entertainment, the new DreamWorks Studios, run by Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider, announced on Monday that it had completed financing arrangements to resume making movies.

The deal with Big Entertainment provides DreamWorks Studios with $875 million, coming from Ambani, the Walt Disney Company and loans made by a syndicate of banks.

Spielberg acknowledged that Reliance’s equity commitment of $325 million helped JP Morgan bring together the syndicate of banks to provide another $325 million in funding. The syndicate — Bank of America, City National Bank, Wells Fargo, Union Bank of California, SunTrust, California Bank & Trust, and Israel Discount Bank — will get priority in repayment.

“This will allow us to move ahead quickly into production with our first group of films,” Snider and Spielberg said in a statement released on Monday.

Last year’s financial collapse tested both Spielberg’s bankability, and the willingness of his Indian partner to weather what has proved to be an extremely difficult period for those starting new Hollywood enterprises.

“We just let it go, without knowing what would happen,” Ambani, chairman of Reliance Big Entertainment told the New York Times of his decision to maintain a commitment to Spielberg through months when debt financing was slow to materialise.

Although the deal, which was announced last year, has been characterised as “Hollywood meets Bollywood”, Spielberg and Snider will have creative control over productions.