Vuelta Group Acquires Telepool

Vuelta Group, the parent company of German film production and distribution outfit SquareOne, has acquired Telepool from Westbrook.

Telepool and its subsidiaries will be combined under the SquareOne banner and led by Al Munteanu, the CEO of SquareOne and Vuelta Group Germany. Michael Heyd will serve as CFO and COO. The combined operation will be home to some 1,200 titles.

“For over 60 years, Telepool has been one of the leading global content houses and we are proud of the work we did with the company,” said Westbrook CEO Kosaku Yada. “We are grateful to Yoko Higuchi-Zitzmann for her leadership over the past two years. Her respect from the creative community has been instrumental in Telepool’s success.”

Munteanu noted: “The combined entity enables SquareOne to offer German-speaking audiences a strong and varied slate of theatrical releases going forward, across multiple genres.”

Telepool’s international sales arm Global Screen will collaborate with Vuelta’s other assets, among them the distribution outfit Playtime in France. Nicolas Brigaud Robert of Playtime noted: “I am excited to see the unique positioning of Global Screen work hand in hand with the know-how of the Playtime sales group to cover a larger spectrum of projects in acquisitions and increase our collective impact on the market.”

Vuelta also owns the Danish film distribution company Scanbox, Italy’s Indiana Production and French distributor Pan. “This latest Vuelta Group acquisition is in line with our vision and strategy to create an integrated European studio, with the capacity to produce and distribute across multiple territories,” said Chairman Jerome Levy. “Germany is an important territory where we will keep investing through co-productions and acquisitions.”