Two years ago, when the pandemic plunged the film industry into one of its darkest periods, New Republic Pictures and its founder and CEO Brian Oliver were touted as a shining light.
As movie theaters closed, wiping out a significant portion of Hollywood’s revenue, and studios scrambled to find alternatives that would allow them to release their films and recoup their investments while looking for new financing options, New Republic signed a $200 million-plus deal with Paramount Pictures. finance up to a quarter of the budgets of 10 films, including “Top Gun: Maverick,” in exchange for a share of the films’ profits or losses.
The New Republic deal provided a lifeline of sorts: mitigating Paramount’s risks while financing highly anticipated films like “Coming 2 America” and the “Mission: Impossible” sequels.
But now, the Los Angeles-based production company’s alleged financial ties to Russian oligarch Dmitri Rybolovlev and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are at the center of a legal dispute that has raised questions about New Republic’s funding.
Bradley Fischer, New Republic’s former president and chief content officer, filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit last Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that while he was negotiating a two-year extension of his contract, New Republic changed course and proposed a new one, less favorable terms of treatment. The change was triggered, he says, when Rybolovlev pulled his assets out of the company after Russia invaded Ukraine and Western governments began imposing sanctions on wealthy Russians.
Rybolovlev and his representatives were not immediately available for comment.
Fischer alleges that when he refused the new terms, he was “mistakenly fired” in July 2022. He claims he is owed more than $15 million.
Representatives for New Republic and Brian Oliver were not immediately available for comment.
While the crux of the lawsuit is a contractual dispute, it offers insight into the opaque world of film financing. The filing alleges that Russian billionaire Rybolovlev played a role in financing “Top Gun: Maverick” and a slate of other major Paramount films.
According to the lawsuit, in 2019 Oliver courted Fischer, a producer with a string of credits to his name, including “Zodiac” and “Shutter Island,” to lead New Republic. The two producers had worked together on the 2010 film “Black Swan,” which received five Oscar nominations, including best picture and a lead actress for Natalie Portman.
Oliver first formed New Republic in 2017 “to produce feature films and television shows with top talent and big budgets,” the lawsuit states. Oliver, a veteran film producer, had previously partnered with Paramount on individual non-franchise projects such as the Elton John biopic “Rocketman.” The New Republic adventure would catapult Oliver into a much bigger cinematic stratosphere.
During a meeting in Los Angeles in the fall of 2019, Fischer was told that the company “intends to finance and produce at least four films in wide release in 2020 and six the following year with budgets ranging from ·wash up to $100 million or more,” with production poised to increase in the coming years, the lawsuit states.
In public statements, Oliver said his ambitions for the New Republic had a solid financial foundation. A month after signing the Paramount deal, he told the Los Angeles Times that the company was financed by wealthy individuals based in Monaco and Spain.
That financing, according to the lawsuit, was financed in large part “with the financial support of Russian oligarch and silent partner, Dmitry Rybolovlev.”
“Rybolovlev acted and acts through a number of agents, affiliates and subsidiaries, including but not limited to his emissary, Valerii An and a company called Amber US Subsidiary, LLC. Through these intermediaries, Rybolovlev has exercised, in at all relevant times, a functional control over the New Republic,” the suit alleges.
Rybolovlev, whose net worth Bloomberg has estimated at $10.1 billion, is based in Monaco. He built his fortune at Uralkali, Russia’s top potash fertilizer producer, during the 1990s privatization era of the former Soviet Union. In 2010 and 2011, he sold his stake in Uralkali and another fertilizer company for $7 billion.
The billionaire mining magnate owns an extensive portfolio of real estate and yachts and a stake in the Bank of Cyprus. It is the current majority owner of the professional football club AS Monaco.
One of the most important art collectors in the world, Rybolovlev owns a number of great works, including pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Mark Rothko.
Rybolovlev is no stranger to making headlines or controversy.
For years, Rybolovlev was involved in a long legal battle with the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier. Rybolovlev accused Bouvier, who over a dozen years bought about 38 works of art on his behalf for $2 billion, of defrauding him.
Among the artworks in question was the painting “Salvator Mundi”, a depiction of Christ attributed to Leonardo da Vinci whose authenticity has been questioned. In 2017, Rybolovlev sold the painting through Christie’s in New York to a mystery buyer for a record $450.3 million. The buyer was later revealed to be a Saudi prince.
Bouvier was arrested in 2015 after Rybolovlev filed a criminal complaint against him in Monaco.
In 2020, the charges against Bouvier were dismissed when a Monaco court upheld a lower court’s ruling claiming that “the investigations had been carried out in a biased and unfair manner under conditions that compromised seriously and lastingly the balance between the parties,” according to the New. York Times.
According to Fischer’s lawsuit, Rybolovlev’s money has been central to New Republic activities.
Fischer alleges that after joining New Republic in 2019, the company had a string of successes, becoming a co-producer and co-financier of several high-profile feature films, including “Top Gun: Maverick” , “Mission: Impossible 7” and “The War of Tomorrow.”
The successful execution led to Fischer and New Republic agreeing in May 2021 to extend their initial two-year contract for two more years and, in principle, to replace Fischer’s bonus agreement with an equity grant.
However, in February 2022, when the parties reached a new agreement, but before the agreement was formalized, Russia invaded Ukraine.
Last March, President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on more than a dozen Russian oligarchs and their families after the invasion. As the Russian war continued, multinational governments moved to confiscate and confiscate more assets, bank accounts, and property of sanctioned individuals.
It was during this time that Rybolovlev “moved to minimize his exposure” and “began to withdraw his business operations from the West. Of particular relevance here, he withdrew from the film industry,” according to the complaint .
In order to accommodate Rybolovlev’s “consolidation of assets,” the company “began requiring Fischer to waive rights that might have impeded a sale of the company or its assets,” according to the suit.
Fischer claims the proposed new terms “had the potential to significantly reduce the value of its contract with New Republic, particularly in the event of a sale and/or Fischer’s termination of the company.”
The lawsuit says Rybolovlev’s funding of New Republic from a “silent partner” is significant and raises questions about the company’s complete financial picture.
The full extent of Rybolovlev’s financial stake in New Republic, as well as the full details of the company’s deal with Paramount, is unclear. Parts of the demand are redacted. Fischer filed a motion to place the complaint under seal along with a fully redacted copy of the co-financing and distribution agreement with Paramount, citing a confidentiality provision.
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