Legendary Pictures is Leaving Universal Pictures and Going Back To Warner Bros.
As we were all expecting, Legendary Pictures is reportedly getting ready to leave its distribution and co-financing deal with Universal Pictures and is headed back to Warner Bros. I always thought it was interesting that Legendary seemed to keep one foot in over at WB after they left them for Universal. Not long after they left WB, they moved Kong: Skull Island from Universal Pictures to WB because they wanted to keep the giant franchises under the same distributor.
Then later on after releasing Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Skyscraper under the Universal distribution deal, they moved Detective Pikachu to WB as well. Things obviously just didn't work out the way they were hoping they would when Legendary moved to Universal. In the end, none of their plans paid off.
The news of the move comes from Variety, but a new deal has yet to be signed. As of right now, the two studios are negotiating the terms and they are expected to come to an agreement shortly. The report goes on to say that the new deal will be a lot different than previous pacts that Legendary has signed.
Namely, the Warner Bros. alliance will be a straight output deal, meaning that the studio will release Legendary’s films for a fee. It will not be a slate financing partnership, which was the kind of alliance that Legendary had at Warner Bros. during an eight-year relationship that ended in 2013. Warner Bros. could invest in certain Legendary films and vice versa, but neither company is be obligated to take equity stakes in each other’s films.
In case you're wondering why Legendary left WB in the first place, it's explained that there was some bad blood between Legendary's Thomas Tull and former WB studio chief Jeff Robinov. Now both companies are under new leadership with Toby Emmerich heading up Warners, and Josh Grode leading the charge at Legendary. It's said that "the two men have been hammering out a new deal in recent weeks."
Legendary no longer has any movies set up at Universal, and they were originally slated to end the deal with them in December. With no commitments holding them down over there, I imagine that Legendary and Universal will gladly part ways in the near future.
It's kinda interesting to see how this whole thing with Legendary played out over the past few years.