Legendary Entertainment has seen a strong rebound during the pandemic, as their latest releases Dune, Enola Holmes, and Godzilla vs. Kong left a good impression, especially since the latter was the first to revive the box office during its March release. Yet, the company has been open to potentially sell or even merging with other companies back in July. It seems that they found a buyer, as Legendary has sold a minority stake of its company to the equity firm Apollo for $760M. However, no official statement has been made on how large that equity stake will be. CEO Josh Grode had the following to say on their sale:
We didn’t need to do this now. We have a significant amount of cash on our balance sheet.” The influx of funding from Apollo “positions us for what we believe is the future, which is a lot of M&A opportunities.
Josh Grode
The company was first purchased back in 2016 by Wanda for $3.5 billion and went on to produce some strong box office franchises. Dune made quite a splash at the box office last year and they’ve made some strong deals with streamers to extend their IPs through other means, such as the recent announcement of an Apple TV+ series that explores the aftermath of 2014’s Godzilla. It seems they have also considered a full takeover, but decided against it. Besides its film offerings, Legendary also consists of a comic book, VR, licensing, and merchandising divisions.
Source: Deadline
