When Ryan Kavanaugh’s Relativity Media filed for bankruptcy, he decided to stay away from Hollywood for a while. But in his return to being a financier and producer, he wants to put his old company and his old ways behind him.
“I made a ton of mistakes and there’s a lot I’d go back and fix,” Kavanaugh said during the opening spotlight conversation at The Grill, TheWrap’s annual business and entertainment conference.
“I was not great to my friends and family,” Kavanaugh said. “I was the guy who canceled a meeting for the more important meeting and kind of a guy that I look back at today going, ‘That guy was kind of an a–hole.’ I now since have learned… you can’t change the past, but if you do something wrong, you can change the future.”
Relativity filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for a second time in May of last year, having racked up somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion in debt in two years. Kavanaugh said during the conversation at TheGrill, however, that the company didn’t go bankrupt because of the debt. Rather, he said, the debt gave a takeover opportunity to the hedge fund that oversaw the studio’s potential initial public offering.
Relativity sold its assets to UltraV Group — a joint venture of funds managed by Sound Point Capital Management and RMRM Holdings.
Last Month, Kavanaugh announced that his new company, Proxima Media, had entered a pact with China’s National Arts Studio, a physical studio boasting a 100-square-mile ranch an hour from Hong Kong, the company said. As part of the agreement, Proxima received a $250 million equity injection to produce up to 10 U.S. films in China and also acquired a large stake in the publicly traded Hong Kong studio, with plans to take over management and building out of the studio.
Kavanaugh explained his vision for a kind of entertainment stock exchange that would produce films, but also give fans and audiences the opportunity to buy a piece of certain films, just like Wall Street investors do. He also hopes to get the major Hollywood studios involved.
“I believe they’ll participate in it both to get equity and as a marketing tool… Netflix’s biggest advantage is that they get to have a one-on-one with the consumer, to a certain extent — they get the data,” Kavanaugh said. “For us, because we’re interacting in real time with the consumers as a movie is greenlit… it gives the studios the ability to interact in real time.
“What we’re doing is what I really started at, and should have focused on throughout my career. We started in financial products in entertainment, which is something there was none of,” he added. “I used to joke around that we were the bridge between Hollywood and Wall Street because literally I could put a banker and a studio head together and they were not speaking the same language.”
All 12 'X-Men' Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best (Photos)
The superhero film franchise is still going strong after two decades. TheWrap's film critic Alonso Duralde ranks all the "X-Men" movies and their spinoffs from worst to best.
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12. "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" (2009)
It’s incumbent on prequels to have enough vitality to keep us from noticing that we’re heading to a pre-determined destination, but this listlessly written ordeal -- loaded with terrible effects and horrible misuse of future franchise savior Deadpool -- ranks as the hottest mess of the mutant adventures.
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11. "X-Men: Apocalypse" (2016)
There are many sins we can forgive in a superhero epic, but dullness is not among them. Director Bryan Singer, usually adept at creating these movies, shockingly drops the ball here, with a who-cares world-domination plot from the titular villain (played by an unrecognizable Oscar Isaac) and more characters than he apparently knows how to handle.
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10. "X-Men: The Last Stand" (2006)
Brett Ratner has reimagined himself as a successful producer of blockbusters and documentaries of late, and if that means he won’t be directing any more movies like this one, more power to him. Ratner threw out all the characterization from the previous two films and crafted a thud-and-blunder action epic that emphasized cacophony and spectacle over story. It wasn’t enough to kill the franchise, but this one definitely counts as a stain on its reputation.
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9. "Dark Phoenix" (2019)
What would appear to be the series' final entry takes the X-Men saga out with a whimper rather than a bang. Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) absorbs an alien force-blob that juices up her powers beyond her control, but the film is far more interested in CG mayhem than in characters or plotting. The whole movie is stolen by the hair and makeup on Jessica Chastain, who has been made to look eerily like music legend Edgar Winter.
8. "The Wolverine" (2013)
Something of a mixed bag -- we get two powerful and captivating female leads for Hugh Jackman to play against, before the film gets mired in corporate intrigue and Japanese sightseeing -- but it’s a huge improvement over the previous Wolverine solo vehicle. Jackman promises one more of these, and then he’s done, so let’s hope the upward trajectory continues.
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7. "X-Men" (2000)
Here’s where it all began, and a case can be made that the success of this 2000 film, alongside 2002’s “Spider-Man” and 2005’s “Batman Begins,” laid the groundwork for the modern superhero ubiquity. The film cagily presents friends-turned-enemies Magneto and Professor X as the Malcolm X and MLK of mutant liberation, giving this Bryan Singer-directed tale more heft than just dudes in spandex whomping each other.
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6. Deadpool 2 (2018)
Ryan Reynolds retains his commitment to the bit in a sequel that neither betrays the first film's promise, nor does it kick things up a notch. As a joke told a second time, however, it's a pretty fun sequel, thanks to the extension of some beloved bits and the addition of zesty new cast members like Zazie Beetz and Rob Delaney.
5. "Logan" (2017)
It's 2029, and an aging Wolverine and 90-something Professor X are hiding out from the world at large -- until they're called to help a new mutant find her way to safety. On the heels of "Deadpool," this R-rated entry allows for bloodier violence and saltier language, and if the storytelling doesn't find new levels of maturity, "The Wolverine" director James Mangold makes the most of his new freedoms, resulting in a rousingly fun character-capper (or is it?).
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4. "X-Men: First Class" (2011)
British action director Matthew Vaughn (“Layer Cake”) gave the series a much-needed jolt of adrenaline with this prequel, taking us back to the beginning of the story and showing how a young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) joined forces before tragically parting ways and pursuing differing philosophies.
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3. "X-Men: Days of Future Past" (2013)
After a lengthy absence, director Bryan Singer returned to the mutants, juggling multiple timelines and characters in a saga wherein Wolverine must return to the groovy Paris of the early 1970s to change history and stop the deadly Sentinels from being created to capture and destroy all mutants. This one’s almost as overcrowded as “Apocalypse,” but at least the characters still get some breathing room.
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2. "Deadpool" (2016)
The overinflated superhero genre has been overdue for a popping, and this breezy action comedy provided the much-needed pin. Making up for the misuse of the character in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” a returning Ryan Reynolds turned the comics’ legendary “Merc with a Mouth” into a human Daffy Duck, bouncing back from every explosion and injury while simultaneously shattering the fourth wall and mocking the franchise in the most R-rated way possible. These movies had it coming.
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1." X2" (2003)
Still arguably one of the best superhero films ever made, this entry enjoys all the second-time-around benefits of any franchise where the first movie had to lay all the groundwork and tell all the origin stories. Smart and politically provocative, featuring strong performances by actors who have been given real characters to play, and loaded with plenty of satisfying action, “X2” remains the gold standard -- and Singer's best entry -- for this series.
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Twenty years after the original ”X-Men“ hit theaters, how does the franchise stack up?
The superhero film franchise is still going strong after two decades. TheWrap's film critic Alonso Duralde ranks all the "X-Men" movies and their spinoffs from worst to best.
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