Buchalter’s Entertainment Practice Group provides business structuring and tax planning for corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, and individuals.
Transactional
On the transactional side, the Firm represents both domestic and foreign financial institutions and film funds in single and slate financing. Our team is skilled at negotiating inter-party and inter-creditor arrangements, drafting loan documentation and performing due diligence on film chain of title and corporate organization of the parties. Our attorneys also represent production companies with respect to project financing, talent agreements, production agreements and distribution agreements, among other things. We prepare contracts, assignments, license and security agreements, on behalf of producers, studios, distributors and talent. From securing gap financing for a producer to structuring the complex multiparty transactions in a blockbuster book-to-movie deal, Buchalter has the capacity and the expertise to devise the agreements that secure our clients’ interests. Our attorneys are particularly well-versed in the various complex state and international tax mitigation structures and are similarly experienced in preparing foreign collateral documents and sales agreements with foreign distributors and financial institutions.
Financial Restructuring & Insolvency
Combining strategic legal protections with informed industry intelligence, the Firm’s decades-long experience in entertainment enables it to achieve outstanding results for its clients who rely on the Firm’s financial restructuring and insolvency expertise to deliver business value and legal security. Our experience includes representation of major studios in all bankruptcy proceedings, among them, avoidance actions, breach of contract disputes and sales transactions of assets such as film libraries.
Litigation
In entertainment-related litigation, the Firm routinely represents clients in matters of complex accounting and multiple-creditor disputes, breach of contract, distribution, corporate governance, labor and employment, intellectual property, literary and film rights, credits, licensing and privacy issues. Our skilled intellectual property team routinely defends copyright and trademark issues for the breadth of media clients. Moreover, the Firm has a core team of e-commerce attorneys experienced in managing and resolving the extensive e-discovery issues that often accompany complex entertainment litigation.
Labor and Employment
The labor and employment legal landscape changes constantly and management needs the legal talent to match. Buchalter attorneys provide protective counsel that minimizes risk and assures compliance—and immediate response when conflict arises. As part of our proactive approach to eliminating potential hazards and costly threats, our labor counsel offer ongoing in-house training seminars on management-employee relations and keen review of workplace policies in place.