Heir-funded film patronage distorts prices and deters other investors

Evidence

In 2019, there were reports of “restructuring” at Annapurna amid bankruptcy rumors after burning through $350 million of credit and a series of films that failed to turn a profit. Larry Ellison leveraged his own relationship with the lenders, including banks such as JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, to pay off the debt at 80–85 cents on the dollar. Banks don’t make a habit of angering the eighth wealthiest man in the world. Megan’s record of financing over-budgeted, underperforming films and then getting her father to bail her out is not good for the filmmaking community; it deters other investors and artificially raises prices. The independent film infrastructure is fragile at the best of times, reliant as it is on festivals, passionate creators, dedicated workers, and word-of-mouth. Inexperienced heirs throwing around money is destructive to the overall health of the industry. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 277

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s ‘does ownership structure leave fingerprints on artistic form’ question — here the mechanism is patronage that insulates directors from commercial discipline, producing over-budgeted visionary films.
• SEED: Angles: ‘the billionaire’s blank check as a distortion mechanism in art markets’ — how nepotistic subsidy of high-culture production (film, opera, publishing) raises prices and chills other funding.