Pantelion Films
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| Joint venture | |
| Industry | Entertainment |
| Founded | 2010 |
| Headquarters | Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
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Key people
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James M. McNamara Paul Presburger Edward Allen |
| Products | Motion pictures Television programs |
| Owners |
Televisa (51%) Lionsgate (49%) |
| Website | www |
Pantelion Films was created in 2010 and based in Santa Monica, California. The studio's goal is to bring wider theatrical distribution of movies aimed at Latino audiences. It is backed by Televisa and Lionsgate. It has made theatrical relationships with movie exhibition chains including Regal Entertainment Group, AMC Theatres, Cinemex, and Cinemark. The studio's first film was 2011's From Prada to Nada, which Lions Gate and Grupo Televisa announced it had commissioned for a television series that did not materialize in 2012.
Pantelion Films bills itself as the first major Latino Hollywood film studio. It marks a transformation of Hollywood film studios in recognizing the fastest growing segment of the United States entertainment targeting Hispanic audiences. Pantelion Films' stature within the film industry was raised further when it successfully acquired the U.S. distribution rights to the 2012 Will Ferrell film, Casa de Mi Padre. The studio was able to move Latino films from strictly being limited release films to a wider, single weekend release on more than 200 screens simultaneously. This was new to the United States with respect to Hispanic audiences and represented the first major attempt by a U.S. based studio to cater to Latino audiences in this manner.
The chairman of Pantelion is James M. McNamara, former chief executive of Telemundo, its chief executive was former Lions Gate executive, Paul Presburger, and its chief operating officer is Edward Allen. Pantelion Films said that Latinos were the fastest growing segment of the movie going audience and were loyal DVD consumers. As Lions Gate released many of Tyler Perry's films which reached an African American audience, Lions Gate and Grupo Televisa were striving for similar success with Latino audiences. McNamara said, "Latinos don't see themselves reflected in Hollywood movies" and said the studio's goal was to change that in their film releases. Pressberger said that the studio hoped to avoid the clichéd, stereotyped images of Latino life and culture. "We get out of the stereotypes of narco kings and drug dealers and gang members" in our films. Financially, tax breaks were "driving the decisions everywhere in the world," Presburger said as film companies including Pantelion looked to lower risks of investment through tax credit deals in the 2010s. An example of how Pantelion actively used tax breaks came in 2014 when it reached a multi-picture deal with Indomina Media of the Dominican Republic to produce up to four Spanish-language films annually to be released by Pantelion. The films were to be entirely produced in the Dominican Republic to take advantage of governmental film incentives.
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Wikipedia