Christoph Fisser, COO of the storied German film facility, discusses why he sold to TPG, how virtual production is going to revolutionize filmmaking and the current boom in studio construction: 'We’re amazed at what’s happening at the moment.'
Vivendi had acquired Babelsberg, previously run by East German state film group DEFA, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and invested more than half a billion dollars upgrading the studio’s infrastructure. “They put in hundreds of millions and, every year for 12 years, they lost money,” says Fisser. “In the end, they were happy to get rid of it.”
Vivendi was so sure Babelsberg would go bust, they gave the new owners 18 million euros to keep them afloat for the first year. “Under German bankruptcy law, if you sell a company, and it goes under in the first year, the creditors can go after the former owners,” explains Fisser. “So we took the money, and we invested it.”
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