Lionsgate said the earlier announced sale of its Starz premium programming service should be sorted out next month and that the deal could expand to include the broader studio. 

In a 10-K filing to the SEC, the Canadian entertainment conglomerate said that it agreed to pay $191.4 million for 200 films and an 18.9% preferred equity interest in production company Spyglass Media.

With that added heft, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer used the opportunity of his company's Q2 earnings report Thursday to pitch a bigger sale beyond just Starz. As Feltheimer sees it, Lionsgate's film library is superior to that of MGM, which Amazon paid $8.5 billion to acquire in March. 

Also read: Lionsgate Says Starz Should Be Spun Off By the End of Summer

"Our library is better than the MGM library. Our library is newer, fresher than the MGM library,” Feltheimer said.

The executive confirmed in May that Lionsgate is looking to sell all or a piece of Starz, with interested potential bidders including Vivendi unit Canal+, the duo of Roku and private equity firm Apollo Global Management, and pay TV company DirecTV. 

In the second quarter, Starz added 1.8 million subscribers globally, as well as 700,000 domestically, to reach 26.3 million.

The Spyglass purchase, however, makes the broader LIonsgate portfolio more appealing at a recessionary time during which big streaming companies still need more content than ever, but don't want to pay to produce it themselves. 

Included in the Spyglass portfolio are recent Quentin Tarantino titles Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, which were acquired from the bankrupt Weinstein Company several years ago. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Paddington, Fruitvale Station, The Kings Speech and Silver Linings Playbook are also in the bin. 

Those movies will be added to a Lionsgate library which includes more than 17,000 film titles and drove $749 million in revenue in the last year. 

“When you see a lot of the big streamers obviously moving into new territories, they need a lot of content. And, frankly, it’s expensive to make new content,” Feltheimer said.

Still, Lionsgate is exposed to the recessionary winds -- it lost $122 million in the most recent quarter, an uptick from the $51 million it lost in April-June 2021. Revenue dipped to $894 million from $901 million the year before.

Now seems like a good time to sell?

“The structure that we’re considering has become broader,” Lionsgate Vice-Chairman Michael Burns said. “And even in a separation, some of our potential partners have expressed interest in both the studio and Starz and, as always, our priority is to create significant shareholder value.”

"The family" presents a special relationship -- you can say things others maybe can't. 

Perhaps that's what Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer was thinking Friday when, speaking alongside Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries at SeriesFest in Denver, he gave "advice" to newly christened Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav. 

Feltheimer seemed to question Zaslav's core strategy: merging HBO with Discovery to achieve more scale will justify the $43 billion paid to AT&T to spin off WarnerMedia and merge it with Discovery. 

"HBO has such a refined, important brand, and even just frankly, expanding HBO to HBO Max, what do you do with that?," said Feltheimer, who's comments were related to Next TV Saturday morning by  SeriesFest reps.

"So now you add all of this Discovery product, nonfiction programming, and for what you paid what, $40 billion for enterprise value, right? And you gonna throw it all on there or  is that going to add $40 billion of value? I don't know," Feltheimer said. 

And he kept going: "One might have said, ‘Well keep it off to the side, it may be a discrete group of buyers and you're not cannibalizing that one plus one equals maybe less than two."

As Feltheimer also noted, HBO is a key client for Lionsgate, with the "mini-major" studio currently producing six shows for the outlet, including Julia and Minx. 

Notably, however, the ties between Lions Gate and Discovery run deep. Liberty Global, Discovery's largest shareholder, also owns a large chunk of Lions Gate, with both Fries and Zaslav joining the Lions Gate board of directors in 2015 when that latter position was consummated. Zaslav only stepped down from the Lions Gate board last year, when he was named CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery. 

For his part, however, Feltheimer didn't appear exactly cagey the whole session, which was also covered by the Penske Showbiz Trade Conglomerate's Deadline. 

When pressed by Fries to assess Netflix's suddenly challenging business climate, Feltheimer remarked, "They decided they were just going to do a slash and burn and get to more subs than anyone and no one would ever catch them. They would just spend and spend, and if anyone else tried to spend as much, they would go out of business. That was pretty much their strategy. But they got to a point where they started slowing down, and we had the pandemic. And I think that maybe they didn’t pivot quite quickly enough. But they’re going to pivot. They still have a tremendous business.”

Lionsgate shares jumped 11% Friday after the long-time “mini-major” reported a Q2 profit after a losing Q1, with a big year-over-year revenue jump too. But what really caught investor ears was news the company will explore spinning off or otherwise separating out its premium video service Starz.

An SEC filing said Lionsgate’s board authorized management "to explore potential capital market alternatives for its media networks business (STARZ) including, but not limited to, a full or partial spin-off, split-off, issuance of a tracking stock or other transactions.”

It didn’t hurt that the streaming side of Starz reported an almost 8% jump in global subscribers, to 18 million. During Lionsgate’s Nov. 4 earnings call, Vice Chairman Michael Burns explained the company’s reasoning simply enough.

“Recent transaction multiples give us confidence that exploring alternate paths is prudent,” he said. 

Prudent indeed. The big fish in entertainment are biting, as happened in last summer’s $8.5 billion Amazon deal for MGM (though regulators may still step in). Earlier in the year, AT&T gave up on its Hollywood dreams, spinning WarnerMedia into a pure-play entertainment venture (and yet another cycle of uncertainty and upheaval) in a $43 billion merger with Discovery. 

Moonbug Entertainment, a four-year-old children's entertainment outlet started by former Maker Studios exec René Rechtman (YouTube monarch Cocomelon is one of its franchises) was just scooped up by a Blackstone-backed entertainment rollup headed by ex-Disney execs Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs. The price, up to $3 billion, including potential earn-outs.

And Mayer and Staggs’ still-unnamed company previously made a splash in August buying Reese Witherspoon production company Hello Sunshine for a reported $900 million. 

Could a Starz spinoff spark the same investor heat, especially given the amount of private equity sloshing around markets? Absolutely, though with some caveats. 

It’s notable that Lionsgate has been in dealmaking mode for quite a while now, dangling its library of 17,000 films and TV shows for possible acquisition. Two years ago, it reportedly talked with CBS about selling Starz, though nothing came of it amid all the other courtroom and boardroom drama then swirling around what’s now ViacomCBS. 

As for Starz’s next iteration, however, Lionsgate may opt for something well short of an outright sale. It’s clear company execs see ongoing benefit for the studio side to have a connected streaming outlet as an alternative alongside its continued “arms dealer” status licensing content to more than a dozen other companies.   

 “We believe that a number of the structures we’re considering would allow Lionsgate and Starz to preserve many of the operational benefits we’re currently achieving within a single corporate structure,” Burns said.

Company executives have said they still have lofty goals for the streaming and pay-TV unit, with a goal of 60 million subscribers within three years. 

That seems … ambitious, but recent analyst reports indicate all the major streaming services are seeing big growth globally even as oversaturated North America increasingly becomes a zero-sum game. So, if a spinoff or similar deal injects new capital into Starz that fuels a broader global expansion and more programming, maybe more than tripling the subscriber base isn’t complete hyperbole. 

Regardless, the company has driven growth so far with an approach notably different from most of the majors, who rely on what might be called four-quadrant content offerings designed to appeal to as many potential subscribers as possible. 

By contrast, Starz has focused on two core audiences: women and Blacks, both substantial audiences often underserved by mainstream programming. Programming for each is led by a bell-cow franchise, Emmy-nominated bodice ripper Outlander and NAACP Image Award winner Power respectively. 

Both shows are getting a bit long in the tooth, with six seasons each since 2014. Outlander creator Ronald D. Moore has been busy with projects for other services, notably Space Race alternate history For All Mankind, for Apple TV Plus. 

The Power franchise, meanwhile, has been recharged with several spinoffs. Executive producer/actor/rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson has been behind many of those projects, though he was raging over the weekend on social media about Starz after a brief, premature launch of an episode he directed of his newest show, BMF. 

Regardless, Starz continues to roll out new programming designed to fill the needs of those core audiences, with edgier, more outsider content that might not get a chance on other networks. 

The company has also been adept at moving content back and forth between premium and ad-supported outlets of many kinds, milking maximum dollars from its relatively smaller library. 

The best example is Schitt’s Creek, which ran for years in relative anonymity on pay-TV channel Pop (which Lionsgate partly owns). 

During its first few seasons, the quirky Canadian comedy typically attracted 50,000 to 100,000 viewers per episode. Then Lionsgate licensed older episodes to Netflix, where they found a new audience and leaped into the cultural zeitgeist. 

Fueled by that huge new following, the show’s final season on cable attracted more than 1 million viewers per episode, and won a sheaf of Emmys, including Best Comedy Series. Now the show is hugely valuable in syndication, with six seasons available on Netflix and Amazon’s IMDb TV. 

Lionsgate hopes to build another cross-platform sensation based on John Wick, the series of high-body-count action films starring Keanu Reeves. A prequel series, The Continental, has just begun shooting, with related projects on the way with streaming and pay-TV outlets in mind. 

The company has also embraced some other tactics to stoke sustained audience interest, including the counter-intuitive decision to give some popular shows a rest from time to time, parking high-profile content on the shelf for short periods so it’s not always available to audiences. 

That feeds a sense of scarcity in the era of the infinite shelf, boosting the long-term value of a franchise that might otherwise might be taken for granted. 

Lionsgate bought Starz just five years ago, which is to say a generation or two ago in streaming terms. More recently, Starz got its own sleek new offices directly behind Lionsgate’s Santa Monica, Calif., headquarters. Presumably that’ll make it ever so slightly easier to carve out the media networks in some sort of transaction while keeping it close by in other respects.

In company statements this week, it said "while we continue to realize substantial synergies from bringing Lionsgate and Starz together, we also see the opportunity to potentially unlock significant shareholder value under a scenario where investors have the ability to value our studio assets and Starz separately.” 

Could two companies be worth more than one? Again, maybe, especially in this dollar-drenched market for streaming assets. 

Just possibly, in an era filled with mergers and growth at all costs, Lionsgate’s counter-programming approach could once again be just the right way to  handle things. It certainly won’t hurt to give it a spin(off). 

While analysts continue to pick apart Lionsgate’s $4.4 billion purchase of premium channel Starz, studio executives told analysts Thursday night the deal will be “transformative” for the movie studio and that pulling the trigger on the deal was not forced by media legend and Lionsgate and Starz shareholder John Malone.

Lionsgate agreed to purchase Starz on June 30, ending months of speculation around a deal. And though Lionsgate touted the deal as a win-win for both companies, some analysts have seen most of the benefits on the premium network side.

On a conference call with analysts to discuss fiscal first quarter results, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer called the Starz deal “the largest and most transformative acquisition in our history. We've been looking at Lionsgate and Starz' respective operations, pipelines and platforms, exploring all the things we can do together, and I can tell you that we’re even more excited about the deal today than when we first announced it.”

And Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns dismissed speculation that Malone – who swapped a 4.5% stake in Starz for a 3.4% interest in Lionsgate last year – was pressuring the movie studio into a deal with the premium channel.

“John Malone thought these two assets would fit nicely together, he’s been saying that for a long time,” Burns said on the call. “But make no mistake: We wanted the Starz deal.”

Related:Inside the Curious Mind of John Malone

Starz has focused on original programming under CEO Chris Albrecht, and has had success with shows like Outlander, Power, Black Sails and The Girlfriend Experience. Lionsgate has been a force in TV production as well, producing past hits for other networks like Mad Men (AMC), Weeds (Showtime) and Nurse Jackie (Showtime) as well as current hits like Orange is the New Black (Netflix) and Casual (Hulu). Feltheimer said that Lionsgate will work closely with Albrecht (his office will be “five yards away” from the Lionsgate CEO’s), and Starz chief operating officer Jeff Hirsch to develop new ideas for programming. The ultimate goal, he said, is to create a brand defining show along the lines of Mad Men, Starz’s vast content library and thematic channels also are a huge benefit.

Related:Aligning Starz

“I think it's pretty obvious that having that kind of brand defining show would be great,” Feltheimer said. “I think people though do forget it, at Starz there's so much additional content going through – there’s branded channels like the Western channel which is one of the best watched channel on anybody's platform on the Encore side. They have huge libraries, [a] huge amount of movies and just some really great series already on the air as well as a number of others that are coming up and being considered that I've read and that are really terrific and premium. But, of course, again having that big monster hit on any platform is a game changer.”

Ending nearly a day of speculation, Lionsgate said it would purchase premium channel Starz in a cash and stock deal valued at $4.4 billion, creating a “global content powerhouse” in movie and television production and distribution.

The deal has been anticipated for months and reports Wednesday said a deal was close. According to Lionsgate, each share of its common stock will be reclassified into 0.5 voting and 0.5 newly created non-voting shares.  Holders of each share of Starz Series A common stock will receive $18.00 in cash as well as 0.6784 of a share of Lionsgate non-voting stock based on a fixed exchange ratio.  Based on Lionsgate’s 20-trading day volume weighted average price, the offer represents a total value of $32.73 per share to Starz shareholders, an 18% premium. Holders of each share of Starz Series B common stock will receive $7.26 in cash and 0.6321 of a share of Lionsgate voting stock and 0.6321 of a share of Lionsgate non-voting stock.

Although anticipated for months, the combination will give Starz the production heft it has craved as well as a vast content library – the merged entity will have 16,000 movie and TV titles – while Lionsgate gets a distribution arm in the Starz and Encore premium channels. It also paves the way for a broad range of new content partnerships and accelerates the growth of Lionsgate and Starz’s own OTT services.

Lionsgate has been a growing force in television production – it purchased a stake in reality TV powerhouse Pilgrim Studios earlier this year – and has produced network hits like Mad Men, Weeds and Nurse Jackie. The studio currently produces 87 original series on 42 U.S. networks and has a feature film business that has generated over $7 billion at the global box office over the past four years. Starz reaches 24 million U.S. subscribers and its Starz Encore network with over 32 million subscribers and five OTT services.

Starz recently rebranded its services under the Starz Encore name and launched apps and a standalone OTT service that it hopes will draw more subscribers into the products.

Related:Aligning Starz

"The combination of Lionsgate and Starz brings significant scale to our portfolio of content and distribution assets and will enable us to compete successfully in today's rapidly evolving global entertainment marketplace," said Lionsgate chairman Dr. Mark Rachesky in a statement.  "By bringing together complementary resources, premium quality intellectual property and exceptional management, this strategic transaction positions us extremely well to unlock the underlying value of our content to create substantial lasting value for our shareholders."

The deal has been approved by Lionsgate’s and Starz respective boards of directors, but still requires approval from shareholders. The companies anticipate the deal will close by the end of the year.

“This transaction unites two companies with strong brands, complementary assets and leading positions within our industry,” said Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer and vice chairman Michael Burns in a statement.  “We expect the acquisition to be highly accretive, generate significant synergies and create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. [Starz CEO] Chris Albrecht and his team have built a world-class platform and programming leader, and we’re proud to marshal our resources in a deal that accelerates our growth and diversification, generates exciting new strategic content opportunities and creates significant value for our shareholders.”

The company intends to fund the cash portion of the deal with a combination of newly issued bank and bond financing. 

 “Jon, Michael and the rest of the Lionsgate team have built the first major new Hollywood studio in decades, and we’re thrilled to join with them in a transaction that multiplies the strengths of our respective businesses,” Albrecht said in a statement.  “Our similar entrepreneurial cultures and shared vision of the future will make this alliance an incredible fit that creates tremendous value for our shareholders, great content for our audiences and limitless opportunities for our newly-combined company.  I am very appreciative of the work, passion and dedication of both of our companies’ employees and more enthusiastic than ever about the future of our business.”

LionTree Advisors is serving as exclusive financial advisor and Baker Botts LLP is serving as legal advisor to Starz.  LionTree Advisors provided a fairness opinion to the board of directors of Starz. The Raine Group is serving as financial advisor and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP is serving as legal advisor to the Special Committee of Starz’s board of directors. The Raine Group also provided a fairness opinion to the Special Committee of Starz’s board of directors.

PJT Partners is serving as lead financial advisor to Lionsgate. Additionally, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse are serving as financial advisors to Lionsgate. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Dentons are serving as legal advisors to Lionsgate. Financing was provided by J.P. Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank.  PJT Partners also provided a fairness opinion to the board of directors of Lionsgate and advised on arranging the transaction financing.

With iconic teen blockbusters like The Hunger Games and Twilight, Lionsgate through the years has carved out a niche in the cutthroat movie business, while its TV business has taken a backseat.

But investors and Wall Street analysts are increasingly taking notice, fueled by a string of hits such as Weeds, Nurse Jackie, Mad Men, Nashville and Orange is the New Black for a wide variety of distributors including premium networks, basic cable, broadcast and subscription video-on-demand outlets.

At the forefront of it all is CEO Jon Feltheimer, a 30-year TV-industry veteran who has grown the small-screen side of the business exponentially over the past 15 years with a steady stream of high-quality, highly profitable shows.

In the past five years, revenue has soared 64.3% at the TV unit, from $353 million in 2011 to nearly $580 million in fiscal 2015 and with an eye toward reaching $1 billion in sales in the next few years. At the same time, Lionsgate’s stock price has increased more than five-fold since 2010, from $6.59 per share to $34.65 per share.

Lionsgate also is jumping feet first into the shortform video and online arenas, partnering with YouTube sensation Freddie Wong’s RocketJump Studios last year. Its first production, long-form comedy RocketJump: The Show on SVOD service Hulu, debuted Dec. 2.

Through its own digital content company, Defy Media, Lionsgate has also tapped into the online arena with brands like Break, Smosh, Screen Junkies and Clevver.

NOT SITTING STILL

With an armful of critical and commercial success — the TV side of Lionsgate has garnered 29 Primetime Emmys over the years and continues to win accolades, snagging seven Golden Globe nominations earlier this month — Lionsgate and Feltheimer aren’t sitting still. The content producer is expanding its reach via a November deal with cable legend John Malone’s Liberty Global and Discovery Communications that is expected to lead to joint content productions and expanded international distribution.

While still in its early stages, Feltheimer says the Liberty Global-Discovery relationship could expand to other companies in the Liberty fold, including Virgin Media in the United Kingdom and Starz in the U.S.

“It’s a little keiretsu, if you will,” Feltheimer told Multichannel News regarding Liberty Global, Discovery and all their intertwined entities. “I can pretty much assure you we will be creating value together.”

Creating value has been Feltheimer’s and Lionsgate’s mantra from the start. It’s why Feltheimer is the Multichannel News 2015 Executive of the Year.

“The overarching opinion of him [Feltheimer] is that he has been patient — he’s been building this up from nothing — he’s been persistent and he’s been creative,” Evercore ISI Group media analysts David Joyce and Vijay Jayant say. “He’s maintained a leanly run and nimble organization that is decentralized, and thereby fosters a lot of entrepreneurism and a healthy creative environment.”

Sanford Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger put it even more bluntly in initiating coverage of Lionsgate stock earlier this month, calling the studio a “structural winner” because it can profit from precisely what has been plaguing broadcast and cable networks for years — poor ratings means a need for better content. Lionsgate is more than happy to provide that programming.

“The same structural change harming TV networks is benefiting independent studios by creating a sustained surge in demand for content,” Juenger wrote, using the older, alternate, two-word version of Lionsgate. “Lions Gate is particularly well situated, with a risk-mitigated theatrical model and an undersized, fast-growing TV model. Lions Gate can happily license content to TV network and SVOD customers, with no conflicts.”

Since 2000, when Feltheimer, Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns, and their partners — Microsoft co-founder and former Charter Communications chairman Paul Allen, JP Morgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, former Capital Research head Gordon Crawford, investment fund Fidelity, German broadcaster Tele-Munchen and SBS Broadcasting — invested in a struggling Canadian movie studio, Lionsgate has morphed into a powerhouse in the independent film arena.

With a string of hits ranging from horror flicks like the Saw franchise to Academy Award winners like Monster’s Ball, The Hurt Locker and Crash, the film unit is still going strong. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, the latest in the series, grossed about $245 million in domestic box office, according to Box Office Mojo, and was the No. 1 movie in the U.S. for the fourth week in a row in the week leading up to Walt Disney Studios’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

TV: GROWTH BIZ

But the real growth story lies hidden in Lionsgate’s television division. CEO Feltheimer, who headed up Sony’s Columbia TriStar Television division and New World Television earlier in his career, oversaw a team of executives led by Lionsgate Television Group Chairman Kevin Beggs and Television Group President Sandra Stern in building Lionsgate’s TV business from a humble beginning: revenue in 2000 was a paltry $8 million.

Just how he did it was a mixture of smart deals, smarter hires and an entrepreneurial spirit that permeates the company even to this day.

Lionsgate was no stranger to dealmaking — it bought several small movie studios during Feltheimer’s tenure, including Summit Entertainment, the home of the Twilight franchise, in 2012, and Artisan Entertainment in 2003. But on the television side, save for its 2006 purchase of distributor Debmar-Mercury, the TV business has primarily grown organically until last month’s acquisition of Pilgrim Studios.

“The purpose wasn’t to buy revenue,” Feltheimer said of the Debmar-Mercury purchase, noting that current hits like The Wendy Williams Show and Celebrity Name Game were developed after the purchase.

But the acquisition did net two “incredible executives” in Debmar-Mercury co-presidents Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein, he added.

Coupled with Lionsgate TV Group’s existing team: Television Group chairman Beggs, who Feltheimer half-jokingly said asked him to buy a helicopter so he could make pitches to all the potential buyers of their shows; Stern, who has worked with Feltheimer for about 30 years; and executive vice president Chris Selak, who heads the group’s scripted programming.

“We’ve got a great group there,” Feltheimer said. “It’s small, but they definitely punch above their weight.”

The TV team is encouraged to be entrepreneurial and independent, with the ultimate goal being to define every new network with a Lionsgate show.

But with every new deal comes the challenge of meshing quality with the right economics — how to make quality shows that also make money.

“I think we’re confident that we’ll put our heads together and we’ll figure it out each time,” Feltheimer said.

The Debmar-Mercury deal was followed later by acquiring interests in premium channel Epix (with Viacom and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), and Asian pay TV distributor Celestial Tiger.

Last month, Lionsgate bought a 62.5% stake in reality programmer Pilgrim Studios for about $200 million.

Including Pilgrim titles, Lionsgate has 80 shows on 40 networks.

Lionsgate also has stayed on top of the ever-changing trends in the TV business, moving into online video with the RocketJump partnership and Defy Media.

While the consensus is that younger viewers don’t watch TV anymore, instead filling their days with short bursts of video from YouTube and countless other online services, Feltheimer isn’t convinced that long-form programming is dead yet.

VALUE IN LONG-FORM

“I lean more toward longer-form content because, at the end of the day, I feel it has more staying power and library value,” Feltheimer said. “And I think it will be stickier and a lot more defining for these digital networks than short-form content.”

That doesn’t mean the Lionsgate chief is soft on technology. Lionsgate has made moves to ensure its content is on virtually every screen available. And he believes the panic over lost viewership to online and over-the-top sources can be alleviated with proper measurement.

“New technology has only encouraged people to watch more content than ever, Feltheimer said.

On the measurement side, networks like Fox are beginning to see that overnight ratings for shows are losing their relevance, Feltheimer said, a trend he believes is a long time in coming.

“People are watching,” Feltheimer said. “The concept of on-demand is a great benefit to content creators, but it also creates new challenges.”

Those new challenges include finding what has been an audience scattered among multiple viewing devices.

“Going forward, technology will enable us to find viewers much more easily,” Feltheimer added. “They will be more addressable in terms of advertising and on-demand transactional viewing. It’s really a huge benefit to the entire business and especially to companies not stuck in their ways with lots of legacy deals and lots of legacy attitudes.”

Improved technology also could mean another distribution channel for the studio — direct-to-consumer.

While it may be a little early for the Lionsgate App, it isn’t out of the question either. Feltheimer noted that the studio already has a major presence across many social-media platforms, including 400 million fans on Facebook, and has forged relationships with Tribeca Enterprises, through its joint SVOD Tribeca Shortlist SVOD service, and with Comic-Con International for a second SVOD platform. The company continues to explore working with other potential OTT providers.

Lionsgate is also working with narrative video game company Telltale Games (in which it owns a stake) to collaborate on a TV show and video game that would be sold together.

“We’re open to and capable of doing virtually anything right now,” Feltheimer said. “Nothing is impossible as long as we remain entrepreneurial.”

That maverick spirit has been a part of Lionsgate as long as Feltheimer has been there. But it really reached a head in 2007, when the studio decided to take a chance on an AMC Network drama set in the 1960s advertising business.

‘MAD MEN’: GAME-CHANGER

Taking on that show — Mad Men — put both Lionsgate and AMC on the quality TV map, according to AMC Networks chief operating officer Ed Carroll. Mad Men completed its seven-year run on May 17.

“For both Lionsgate and AMC, Mad Men was a show that changed the way people think about those companies,” Carroll said. He recalled that after receiving the script from series creator Matt Weiner, AMC produced its own pilot for the show at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, N.Y., and then shopped the pilot around to every major studio.

“Jon and his team, including Kevin Beggs, were the only ones who stepped up,” Carroll said.

While in hindsight, agreeing to produce Mad Men seems like a no-brainer, it was a big leap for the studio. At the time, the hottest genre in television was episodic crime dramas like Law & Order and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Mad Men was a period piece, had a large ensemble cast full of unknowns and dealt with the inner workings of the advertising business.

“In many ways, Mad Men went against the grain,” Carroll said. “Jon saw the potential in it, in doing something original, something different, something of high quality. You could see in the scripts that clearly Matt Weiner was a great talent, but there was a lot of risk that Lionsgate took on. Nobody could project that Mad Men would be a very profitable show internationally or in back-end syndication. I give [Feltheimer] a lot of the credit.”

Even though Mad Men ended its run this year, Carroll said AMC’s relationship with Lionsgate continues, with the drama Broke, an adaptation of a Danish series by Nurse Jackie and Dexter writer and showrunner Clyde Phillips. The show is expected to premiere in 2016.

While another Lionsgate programming stalwart ended its run this year — Nurse Jackie, which bowed in April after seven seasons on Showtime — the pipeline is far from dry.

In addition to a fourth season of Orange Is the New Black on Netflix, Lionsgate has multiple series on broadcast, cable and SVOD, including Nashville, which will continue its fourth season on ABC in March; The Royals (in its second season on E!); Manhattan (starting its second season on WGN America); and two sophomore series on Hulu, Casual and dark comedy Deadbeat.

In addition, Lionsgate has several new shows in the hopper. Alongside Broke, Lionsgate will launch Graves, a comedy with Nick Nolte and Sela Ward, on co-owned Epix in 2016, Greenleaf, a drama slated for OWN, and The Devil You Know, a period drama around the time of the Salem witch trials from Weeds and Orange is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan for HBO.

“Weeds, Mad Men, Nurse Jackie, Orange Is the New Black, it’s a pretty good list of accomplishments,” Carroll said. “Those were shows that were certainly successful economically but also had very, very high standards of quality. It is nice to work with someone who has the sensibility for both.”

CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves, a close friend for more than three decades, called Feltheimer a truly great leader, charismatic, with great creative and business abilities as well as an excellent eye for talent.

Back in the 1990s, when Moonves was a Warner Bros. TV executive and Feltheimer was running Sony’s TV business, they had a friendly rivalry in competing to place shows with networks. Later, the two became partners as Lionsgate sold shows to CBS-owned Showtime and when the two companies jointly acquired Pop, the former TV Guide Network.

Moonves said the Pop partnership came about because of his personal relationship with Feltheimer — the Lionsgate chief called him up when the TV Guide Network was for sale and asked if he’d like to pair up to buy it.

“He said it would be fun to do this together. And we did, and it has been fun and it has been successful,” Moonves said. Later, CBS called on Lionsgate to distribute and coproduce a number of films in CBS’s small movie division.

“Jon is a first-rate partner,” Moonves said. “He’s very loyal, he’s very fair, he really looks out for his partners. You always know you’re getting a fair shake.”

CALL FOR COLLABORATION

That sense of fairness extends to the industry as a whole. In 2012, Feltheimer went a little out on a limb in his keynote speech at the Cable Telecommunications Association for Marketing Summit in Orlando Fla., calling for the distribution and content communities to work closer together.

At the conference, Feltheimer said the emergence of new technologies and quality content present the cable industry with unprecedented opportunities for growth. But high-profile carriage battles between distributors and programmers threaten to undermine those prospects.

“You need to work together and make our jobs easier, not compete in ways that make them harder,” Feltheimer said.

Three years later, not a lot has changed, but Feltheimer is optimistic.

“I think the tone of conversations between content suppliers and distributors is still not where it could be,” Feltheimer said. “The primary driver for the business, no matter whether you are a distributor, programmer or supplier, should be providing great content.

“That content is all of our product,” Feltheimer continued. “Everyone is still incentivized to continue to work cooperatively to grow the pie. People are watching more content than ever before. If we all put our heads together, we will continue to make the pie bigger and ultimately benefit everyone in the media space.”