Village Roadshow Cuts Handful of Staffers

Village Roadshow Leisure Group, the manufacturing and finance firm that has backed the Matrix and Ocean’s franchises, is present process a small spherical of layoffs.

The banner, led by CEO Steve Mosko, has lower eight staffers in enterprise affairs, administration in addition to movie and TV roles over the course of the final couple weeks, The Hollywood Reporter has realized. The pink slips arrive as the corporate is exploring strategic choices, together with taking over extra buyers.

On the offers entrance, Village Roadshow has been comparatively quiet this yr. The corporate, which has produced greater than 90 options with Warner Bros. over the previous a number of many years together with Mad Max: Fury Street, Joker and Charlie and the Chocolate Manufacturing unit, has been locked in arbitration with the studio because it filed a lawsuit in Feb. 2022.

On the time, Village Roadshow claimed partly that Warners devalued The Matrix franchise by releasing Resurrections day-and-date throughout the COVID-era on its streaming service Max as an alternative of giving it an unique theatrical run. (Resurrections grossed solely $157 million globally.)

“WB agreed to permit its sister firm to stream Village Roadshow’s tentpole movie, on the identical day of its theatrical launch, for no extra income in order that its sister firm might improve its subscribers and subscription revenues with the extra good thing about boosting its father or mother firm’s inventory,” a lawyer for Village Roadshow alleged.

In a subsequent authorized submitting, the corporate claimed that it was being lower out from being a monetary accomplice on a number of tasks in improvement on motion pictures the place it shares rights, together with Sherlock Holmes, Fringe of Tomorrow, Prepared Participant One, I Am Legend and The place the Wild Issues Are. After a number of months, a decide moved the case to arbitration in Could 2022.

Amid that authorized battle, Warner Bros. launched Fury Street prequel Furiosa in Could with out Village Roadshow, with the movie happening to gross $173 million. The corporate, which has been owned since 2017 by asset supervisor Vine Various Investments, additionally didn’t take part in DC’s Joker: Folie à Deux sequel that bows on Friday in theaters.

Borys Equipment contributed to this report.