Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners sells 50% of its film music catalog IP to Multimedia Music, including music from composers like John Williams, Danny Elfman, Thomas Newman, Alexandre Desplat, and more.
Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners has sold a 50% stake in its music publishing and master rights from the film music library to Multimedia Music (MMM), including award-winning films 1917, Green Book, The BFG, Bridge of Spies, The Post, Office Christmas Party, The Girl on the Train, and more. The catalog features music from composers such as John Williams, Thomas Newman, Danny Elfman, Rachel Portman, Alexandre, Mark Isham, and Rob Simonsen.
The partnership will also see Multimedia and Amblin pursue new initiatives to increase value by maximizing income collections and sourcing new uses for the catalog in commercials, trailers, and television shows.
“We are proud to partner with MMM and look forward to exploring new avenues to maximize the value of our extensive music catalog alongside their fantastic team,” said Chris Floyd, Amblin Partners Co-COO & General Counsel.
“By combining Amblin’s unrivaled creative content with our ability to maximize media music earnings, we are confident that we will together be able to build significant additional value for both our partnership and for the composers whose amazing work makes up the catalog,” said Multimedia Music Partners James Gibb and Phil Hope.
The catalog deal follows a recent intensive round of acquisition activity by MMM, which in addition to the Amblin music library stake, includes the purchase of the STX Entertainment and Atlantic Screen Music libraries and the catalogs of music income and copyrights from numerous composers, including James Newton Howard, Tyler Bates, David Buckley, Michael Corcoran, Sean Callery, and Trevor Morris. Multimedia Music recently closed a $100 million investment uplift in the Multimedia Music fund, doubling in size to $200 million.
As catalog sales by artists have accelerated in recent years, companies like MMM have been eager to monetize them. Warner Bros. Discovery is looking for a hefty price tag to offload all or part of its music catalog, which it considers a non-core asset.