Saul Zaentz Film Library Including ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ & ‘English Patient’ Sold To Teatro della Pace Films
03.10.2023 - 18:03
/ deadline.com
EXCLUSIVE: The Best Picture Oscar winners One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, The English Patient and Amadeus have a new owner.
The Saul Zaentz Company has sold its film library, which also includes titles such as The Mosquito Coast, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Wattstax, to Teatro della Pace Films.
The films are staying in the family, though, as Teatro della Pace is owned by Zaentz’s nephew, producer Paul Zaentz. ACF Investment Bank advised The Saul Zaentz Company on the deal alongside Arnold & Porter as legal advisers.
It comes three months after The Saul Zaentz Company sold the rights to The Lord of the Rings, via its Middle-Earth Enterprises, to Sweden’s Embracer for nearly $400M. Those rights included motion picture, video game, board game, merchandising, theme parks and stage production rights relating to the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit franchises.
Terms of the Teatro della Pace deal were not disclosed, but it also includes At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Fritz the Cat, Three Warriors, Pay Day, Goya’s Ghosts and Heavy Traffic.
It’s not clear how Paul Zaentz plans to use the rights, but given that Apple recently remade The Mosquito Coast as a TV series and Netflix made One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest spinoff Ratched, as well as a TV adaptation of The English Patient in the works at the BBC, there’s plenty of opportunities.
Saul Zaentz, who died in 2014, was a legendary film producer who won Best Picture Academy Awards in three consecutive decades as well as the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. He funded his films thanks to the success of Creedence Clearwater Revival, which had a deal with Zaentz-owned Fantasy Records.
Zaentz sued Creedence frontman John Fogerty in the 1980s, alleging that the