Lionsgate, the studio behind The Hunger Games, went public through a gold miner
The film company Lionsgate took its name from a Vancouver bridge and got onto the stock market by merging with a small gold-mining firm, whose mines it quickly sold. Twenty-seven years on, it split off its studios and now calls itself Starz Entertainment, after the pay-TV channel it bought.
Frank Giustra, recently retired as head of the investment bank Yorkton Securities, founded the company on July 10, 1997. He put in $16 million, investors added $40 million, and the name honoured the Lions Gate Bridge near its founding city. To list quickly, it merged into Beringer Gold Corp., a Toronto-listed mining company, and sold off the mining assets. It then bought its way into film, acquiring Montreal distributor Cinépix, which became Lionsgate Films, and a Vancouver studio lot.
The early years were rocky. Year one brought $42.2 million in revenue and a small loss, and the share price sank to $1.40, too low to pay for deals in stock. In year two losses reached $9.3 million, mostly from a stake in a producer's new company, and the studios were put up for sale without finding a buyer. Relief came in January 2000, when a group including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and former Sony Pictures executive Jon Feltheimer invested $33.1 million, and Feltheimer took over as chief executive.
Under Feltheimer, Lionsgate grew by buying libraries and rivals. It bought Artisan Entertainment for $220 million in 2003 and moved to Santa Monica. The big prize was Summit Entertainment, maker of the Twilight films, acquired for $412.5 million in January 2012. That November, thanks to The Hunger Games and the final Twilight film, the studio passed $1 billion at the box office for the first time, and it repeated the feat the following year.
In 2016 it agreed to buy the premium channel Starz for $4.4 billion in cash and stock. The studios were spun off as Lionsgate Studios in May 2024 and fully separated in May 2025, leaving the parent to trade on Nasdaq as Starz.
Source: Starz Entertainment
