ACF advises The Saul Zaentz Company on the Sale of its Iconic Film Library to Teatro della Pace Films
ACF is pleased to announce it has advised The Saul Zaentz Company on the sale of its iconic film library to Teatro della Pace Films, a Paul Zaentz owned movie production company.
The Oscar winning film library includes One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, and The English Patient, each of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Other iconic titles include: The Mosquito Coast, At Play in The Fields of the Lord, Fritz the Cat, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Three Warriors, Pay Day, Goya’s Ghosts, Heavy Traffic, and Wattstax.
This deal follows The Saul Zaentz Company’s recent sale of Middle-earth Enterprises (also advised by ACF Investment Bank) and its intellectual property rights to the Embracer Group which included the rights to motion pictures, video & board games, merchandising, theme parks, and stage productions, based on the iconic literary works by J.R.R Tolkien including, The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings trilogy, which comprises of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.
The Saul Zaentz Company was founded in 1976. Its founder, Saul Zaentz was a critically acclaimed American film producer, winning the prestigious, rarely given, Irving G Thalberg award for sustained excellence in motion picture production. He and his team, including his nephew and an acclaimed producer in his own right, Paul Zaentz, had significant success adapting novels/plays into movies through The Saul Zaentz Company and accumulated 34 Oscar nominations with 22 wins.
The film library comprises of hugely successful, award-winning films, and at the time of release, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was the 7th highest box office of all time.
The titles continue to capture audiences with frequent showings of the originals worldwide and with recent authorized TV spins offs, such as Apple’s The Mosquito Coast and Netflix’s Ratched, as well as events such as Amadeus Live.
Saul Zaentz Film Library
“So excited that this iconic library of films has returned to the nephew of Saul Zaentz – a very exciting transaction involving some of my favorite films.”
Thomas Dey Chief Executive Officer ACF Investment Bank
“Zaentz CEO Frank Noonan and I are very pleased that our iconic library of films finds its home with one of its creators, Paul Zaentz, who was top bidder in the competition handled so well for us by ACF.”
Marty Glick COO
The Saul Zaentz Company
Paul Zaentz is a film producer, and the founder of the buyer, Teatro della Pace Films. His collaborations include the acclaimed documentary Coup 53 as well as The Talented Mr. Ripley. At The Saul Zaentz Company, Paul was Production Controller on Amadeus, directed by Milos Forman, and Financial Controller on Peter Weir’s The Mosquito Coast. He was Associate Producer on The Unbearable Lightness of Being, At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient. He was also the Executive Producer on Goya’s Ghosts. In those capacities, Paul was on location many months of the year including, Czechoslovakia and Hungary for Amadeus, Belize and Rome for Mosquito Coast, and England, Italy and Tunisia for The English Patient.
Paul Zaentz
Advisors
Chief Executive Officer
ACF Investment Bank
Managing Director
ACF Investment Bank
Join us at MIPCOM in Cannes, France
16th to 19th October 2023
The ACF team are attending MIPCOM from 16th to 19th October 2023.
If you are thinking of attending this event and would like to meet with the LA or London teams, please contact Laura.Cutter@acfib.com to arrange a meeting.
We look forward to seeing you there!