Video Interview: Lionsgate’s Jon Feltheimer

NEW YORK: Jon Feltheimer, the CEO of Lionsgate, talks to World Screen about the company’s many businesses.

Lionsgate has built a successful business by identifying underserved audience niches and reaching them in movie theaters, on television and on digital platforms. For horror fans there is the Saw franchise. Urban viewers have enjoyed a steady diet of Tyler Perry movies and TV series, and Pantelion Films, Lionsgate’s joint venture with the Mexican media giant Televisa, has been serving Latino movie aficionados, recently scoring a box-office hit with Instructions Not Included. Another key focus has been the young-adult market; the megahit Hunger Games and Twilight franchises have been joined this year by Divergent. For the second year in a row, Lionsgate broke the $1-billion mark at the domestic box office, and took in another $1 billion internationally.

The company has provided discerning viewers sophisticated cable series like Mad Men, Weeds and Nurse Jackie, as well as Orange Is the New Black on Netflix. Lionsgate Television has 21 cable series on 16 different channels, five shows in national syndication, Nashville on the broadcast network ABC, and new shows for Amazon and Hulu. In addition, the television division has diversified its business with its innovative 10/90 model, with such shows as Anger Management and Saint George, and has increased its production of nonfiction series.

Creativity is not only pervasive in the development and production of films and TV series, it is also a hallmark of many of Lionsgate’s financing-and-distribution deals. Following a standard set by Feltheimer, the company has pursued a very disciplined approach to production, yet never at the expense of quality, and always attracting top talent to the studio.

Lionsgate, which had record revenues in 2013 of $2.7 billion, has equity positions in nine branded channels around the world, including FEARnet; EPIX; TVGN, a fifty-fifty partnership with CBS Corporation; and six channels with Celestial Tiger Entertainment in Asia.