Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners has sold a 50% stake in its catalog of music publishing and music master rights from the film music library to Multimedia Music, including marquee and award-winning films 1917, Green Book, The BFG, Bridge of Spies, The Post, Office Christmas Party, Thank You For Your Service and The Girl on the Train and others. The catalog features iconic music from several of the most renowned and celebrated composers in the world including John Williams, Thomas Newman, Danny Elfman, Alexandre Desplat, Rachel Portman, Mark Isham and Rob Simonsen.
The music partnership will also see MMM and Amblin pursue new initiatives to increase value by maximizing income collections and sourcing new uses for the catalog in commercials, trailers and television shows.
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“We are proud to partner with MMM and look forward to exploring new avenues to maximize the value of our extensive music catalogue alongside their fantastic team,” said Chris Floyd, Amblin Partners Co-COO & General Counsel.
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“By combining Amblin’s unrivalled creative content with our ability to maximize media music earnings, we are confident that we will together be able to build significant additional value for both our partnership and for the composers whose amazing work makes up the catalog,” said Multimedia Music Partners James Gibb and Phil Hope.
Catalog sales by artists have accelerated in recent years and companies are looking to monetize them too. Warner Bros. Discovery is looking for a big pricetage to offload all or part of its music catalog, which it considers a non-core asset.
The catalogue deal follows a recent intensive round of acquisition activity by MMM which, in addition to the Amblin music library stake, includes the purchase of the STX Entertainment and Atlantic Screen Music libraries and the catalogues of music income and copyrights from numerous composers including James Newton Howard, Tyler Bates, David Buckley, Michael Corcoran, Sean Callery and Trevor Morris.
Multimedia Music, which launched in 2021, recently closed a $100 million investment uplift in the Multimedia Music fund, growing from $100 million to $200 million.