EXCLUSIVE
Here are two names you don’t expect to see together: Moammar Gadhafi. Hollywood.
But guess what – they’re in bed, making movies.
Hollywood’s latest financial backer is the middle son of the Libyan dictator, Saadi Gadhafi, who is backing a movie production fund called Natural Selection to the tune of $100 milllion.
Mathew Beckerman, the CEO of Natural Selection, secured Gadhafi"s backing barely one year ago, and has lately won the Libyan’s agreement to accelerate his investment from an initial plan of 20 films over five years.
“He loves movies,” explained Beckerman in an interview in his suite on the seventh floor of the Carlton Hotel at the Cannes Film Festival, where he’d come to look for new projects. “He’s seen ‘Lost’ 30 times. He has stacks of DVDs of American films.”
The odd couple story of how Beckerman, 33, a New Jersey-born Jew, came to be backed by the billionaire son of one of the Middle East’s most notorious figures is an unlikely meeting of financial need with celebrity obsession.
(Read also: How Matty Met Saadi -- and Got Him to Invest in Movies)
But it’s become an actual friendship and, Beckerman insists, a viable business.
“He’s 35, gracious, nice – and really cool,” said Beckerman, who says the movies he makes with Saadi Gadhafi will be insistently non-political. (Gadhafi was not in Cannes and declined requests to be interviewed.)
The company has already co-invested in a $12 million-budget movie, “The Experiment," and fully financed the $3 million “Isolation,” a thriller directed by Steven Kay ("The Shield").
Beckerman’s plan is to make the mid-range budget movies that have largely disappeared as Hollywood’s major studios have focused on tentpoles, and independent studios have gone belly-up. The movies are positioned make money from foreign presales, tax rebates and domestic distribution.
In that environment, Beckerman has gotten pushback from some associates when they learn of the Gadhafi connection, but most accept it.
“It’s been challenging,” he said. “Initially when people hear it, they get concerned. But it’s money at a time when there’s very little equity out there.”
He added: “I told Saadi that for every person who won’t work with us, we’ll find one who will.”
Libya has become less of an international pariah since Moammar Gadhafi settled the Pan Am terrorist bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland in 2003, and the United Nations lifted sanctions against the country. (
Libya apologized and paid compensation to victims' families.)
The dictator and his famliy have vast amounts of personal wealth, fed by Libya’s natural oil reserves mainly sold to industrialized nations.
Saadi, the leader’s second-born son, had a career as a professional soccer player, and headed Libya's soccer federation. He’s been known to have been pursuing a partnership in Hollywood for the past two years or so and his main occupation is working to build a free-trade zone in Libya.
According to a 2004 New York Times article, Gadhafi is president of World Navigator Entertainment, a movie production company seeking to invest in the Western film industry.
