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Starz Wars

An only-in-Hollywood story about Lionsgate, the Screaming Eagle SPAC, and “creditor-on-creditor violence.”

Jon Feltheimer
Lionsgate did not end up keeping its existing capital structure in place: On the contrary, it pulled off one of the most startling eviscerations of bondholder rights that I have ever heard about. Photo: Tom Cooper/Getty Images for SeriesFest
William D. Cohan
May 22, 2024

For more than two years now, Lionsgate Entertainment has been talking about spinning off Starz—its challenged streaming service, which it bought in 2016 for $4.4 billion from John Malone’s media empire—into its own separate company. Nothing much happened with the plan until last December, when Lionsgate announced that it was joining forces with Screaming Eagle Acquisition Corp—a SPAC founded by serial SPAC sponsors Harry Sloan, a longtime Hollywood entrepreneur and the former C.E.O. of MGM, and Jeff Sagansky, a former chairman of CBS Entertainment and a former co-president of Sony Pictures Entertainment.