How Anton’s Sébastien Raybaud Plans to Accelerate Film Output of ‘Greenland’ Producer Thanks to Game-Changing BlackRock Investment

variety.com:

Alex Ritman When Sébastien Raybaud founded Anton in 2011 (as Anton Capital Entertainment), his first major deal proved to be groundbreaking for the European film industry.

Although institutional slate financing had been a regular practice among U.S. studios (Raybaud himself helped arrange several deals during his time on the film arm of investment bank Société Générale in London), it just wasn’t being done on the continent. “There was a disconnect,” he says, pointing to the money that was available in the U.S.

compared to Europe. So Anton was originally set up to “marry big investors with the industry.” It did just that with a €150 million (($160 million) three-year slate-financing deal with StudioCanal using U.S.

fund Falcon, with the cash injection helping bankroll both the hugely successful “Paddington” and “Shaun the Sheep” franchises, kickstarting a period of significant growth for the Vivendi-owned studio. “Because of the money we raised, we really helped them get to a different stage of their evolution where they wanted to do bigger films,” says Raybaud, adding that Anton ended up co-funding more than 150 films with StudioCanal.