James Packer is re-entering the high stakes game of co-financing Hollywood movies starting with Gravity, the outer space saga starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, which opens in Australia on Thursday.
Packer is part of a triumvirate which will co-fund the majority of the films on Warner Bros.' slate for four years.
His partners in the deal worth up to $US450 million are filmmaker Brett Ratner, with whom he formed the production co-venture RatPac Entertainment last December, and Steven Mnuchin’s Dune Entertainment.
RatPac will develop its own movies outside the Warner Bros deal, including films for the vast and increasingly lucrative Chinese-speaking markets.
Ratner, who is directing Dwayne Johnson in the MGM/Paramount film Hercules: The Thracian Wars, told Deadline.com, “We are already developing some movies we feel will work in the Asian market.”
The Packer family has long shown an appetite for Hollywood dealmaking. Kerry Packer was an investor in Arnon Milchan’s production powerhouse New Regency. James Packer sold the 25% stake in 2008 for a reported $US324 million.
Warner Bros. had been looking for a new financing partner since its deal with Legendary Entertainment expired in July. Legendary then signed with Universal Pictures.
The new co-financing arrangement covers Grudge Match, a comedy starring Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone as aging boxers which opens in the US at Christmas and in Australia in January, and Man of Steel, the Zack Snyder-directed Superman reboot.
The deal excludes the 6-8 films a year that WB funds jointly with Village Roadshow Pictures, a long-standing pact which covers such upcoming releases as the animated feature LEGO: The Movie, Edge of Tomorrow, a sci-fi thriller starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road and the Wachowski siblings' Jupiter Ascending.
Formerly headed by Aussie Greg Coote, Dune Entertainment co-funded films with 20th Century Fox, including Titanic and Avatar, from 2005 until last year.