Candle Media, the leisure firm backed by non-public fairness big Blackstone and headed up by former Disney executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs, is reorganizing round two divisions, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
The inner adjustments at Candle Media, first reported on by Semafor on Tuesday, will see animated collection folded into the corporate’s kids’s media firm Moonbug Leisure, which launched in 2018. Moonbug, which was acquired by Candle Media in 2021, creates and distributes Cocomelon and the collection Blippi.
A second division, Candle Studios, to embody dwell motion content material, might be led by Howdy Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden. The corporate acquired Reese Witherspoon’s Howdy Sunshine, which produces collection like Large Little Lies and The Morning Present, in a deal valued at $900 million in 2021.
Candle Media, backed by funding capital from funds managed by Blackstone’s non-public fairness enterprise, has grown in recent times by means of expensive acquisitions, together with for Howdy Sunshine, Moonbug, Fauda maker Faraway Highway Productions and a stake in Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook Inc.
However these buys left Candle Media saddled with debt — Bloomberg pegged the debt determine at $1 billion as of the top of 2023 — simply because the period of Peak TV went bust and demand by international streaming gamers for authentic content material has plateaued. The result’s an organization seeking to reduce working prices as a part of different inside initiatives to higher monetize big-ticket acquisitions.
Mayer, the architect of Disney’s streaming technique, had wager that the worth of high-end content material created and bought by unbiased studios like Candle Media would considerably rise amid streaming wars competitors.
That was earlier than the influence of the twin Hollywood strikes final 12 months, which signaled the top of simple cash to construct out streaming platforms and beneficiant and plentiful total offers for expertise to star in authentic content material films and collection.
Now as increased rates of interest raises Candle Media’s debt prices, the indie studio enterprise has simply obtained that a lot tougher to show a revenue in as main traders search for high quality and returns on investments.