BREAKING: Free Association partners Channing Tatum, Reid Carolin and Peter Kiernan have secured a $2 million revolving film development fund with Atwater Capital. Deal calls for Atwater to finance a minimum of five projects generated by the company. That arrangement will be overseen by Free Association Veep of Production Michael Parets, as Free Association continues under its first look deal at Universal.
Atwater Capital has been slowly asserting itself as a financing presence in Hollywood. Two Cannes Film Festivals ago it launched a $30 million content fund and at the last Cannes in May, Atwater committed to finance development of an English-language remake of Les Invisibles, the Louis-Julien Petit-directed French film. It also provides funding for Mad River Pictures and financed the David Ayer-directed The Tax Collector. Other investments include the Stockholm-based Epidemic Sound, and four German film and TV companies in partnership with KKR.
Free Association is currently in production on the Kevin Tatum-starrer Fatherhood at Sony, and Tatum appears in the Shawn Levy-directed Free Guy. Tatum’s films have generated over $4.5 billion in global box office, and they have produced the Jump Street films and the live show transfer of Magic Mike in Las Vegas, with another coming in Berlin.
Said Vania Schlogel, Atwater Capital founder & Managing Partner: “We fundamentally believe in great storytelling, and that process is best entrusted to the storytellers themselves. The rise of digitally distributed content means that there is always an audience for good stories, even if that audience is aggregated now across communities that span different continents in a way that linear distribution could never reach. Given the incredible track record of Free Association and Channing Tatum in identifying and developing great stories, we are thrilled and honored to partner with them.”
CAA Media Finance consulted on the deal, this after Tatum and Free Association joined CAA in February. Free Association is lawyered by Hansen, Jacobson.
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