Imagine Entertainment Being Circled By Potential Buyers

Anthony D'Alessandro
·1 min read
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Investors and potential buyers are taking interest in Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment, Deadline has confirmed.

The interested parties include an unnamed Middle East sovereign wealth fund, as well as international banks and a domestic private equity firm. The valuation of the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind production company is north of $800M.

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Imagine’s umbrella consists of NY-based indie production shingle Jax Media (Emily in Paris, Russian Doll, Younger, Broad City), a majority stake in Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, a robust documentaries division including titles such as NatGeo’s Rebuilding Paradise, directed by Ron Howard, Sony Pictures Classics’ Julia and Apple’s Who Are You, Charlie Brown?

Imagine’s library includes Howard’s canon with such titles as Backdraft, Apollo 13 but also TV series such as 24, Arrested Development, Friday Night Lights and Empire. Howard is also set to direct his first animated feature movie for Paramount, The Shrinking of Treehorn. There’s also a series based on Howard’s Willow in the works at Disney+. Upcoming is the Netflix Andrew Garfield title tick, tick … Boom! from Lin-Manuel Miranda.

There’s also Imagine Impact, which is the production company’s incubator lab for creatives, which is a means of accelerating the script development process by removing bias in the submission process.

An Imagine rep provided no comment when reached by Deadline. Variety first reported the news about buyers’ interest in Imagine.

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