Terminator rights sold for $29.5M to Pacifor, beating Sony & Lionsgate

The business side of the movie business usually isn’t my cup of tea, as I’d rather learn about who will be starring in certain movie versus how much money they’re going to make and what type of negotiations went down to get there. But the whole TERMINATOR franchise fiasco has been one business story I’ve been following quite closely, mostly because the franchise is near and dear to my heart.

According to Deadline Hollywood, Halycon Holding Corp. held an auction for the franchise rights yesterday, with Lionsgate, Sony Picture’s Entertainment, and Pacifor (a hedge fund company) as the key players involved. After hours and hours of auctioning, the franchise was finally sold to…. Pacificor for $29.5M!

Paciicor who? No worries, it starts to make sense…. Pacific was the company that fronted Halycon the $30M for the franchise rights in 2007. Having Pacific win the auction essentially paid themselves back for the investment–even if they were the reason Halycon was going bankrupt in the first place.

Apparently Sony was a titch upset to be losing out on the deal, and even Lionsgate had big plans for the franchinse, which included a complete re-boot, back to basics, with real emotional stories, and effects that will be secondary.

Thank Zeus Lionsgate didn’t win, as nothing would piss me off more than a TERMINATOR reboot. So what does this mean for the future of the franchise? One could only assume Pacificor will sell the franchise off eventually, but at this point, it doesn’t look like they have much movie-making plans any time soon. Hopefully they won’t sell it off to Lionsgate…

To read up on all the hairy details, especially more info. on Halycon and Pacificor’s unique relationship, click HERE and stick around as we find out if, or when, a fifth TERMINATOR movie will be in the works.