The usual endgame for a successful European independent producer is a sale: a bigger group buys the company, and the founder ends up answering to someone else. The Creatives was built precisely to avoid that. Seventeen producers from nine production outfits will own and control the group together, while the outside money arrives as a minority stake.

As Variety first reported, Anton Studios, the fast-growing European studio led by Sébastien Raybaud, is taking a minority position as partner and investor in The Creatives. The alliance, founded as a long-term strategic partnership five years ago, now becomes a jointly owned holding, with Romain Bessi remaining as CEO. Its members are Haut et Court and Unité in France, Komplizen and Razor Film in Germany, the U.K.’s Good Chaos, Lemming Film in the Netherlands and Belgium, Maipo Film in Norway, Spiro in Israel and Masha in the U.S.

Bessi told Variety the producers began as “a form of club” that met every month and co-produced together because they did not want anyone to buy them out. Finding money for the holding took more than a year. The investor had to be European, “not only because of the perception, but also because of regulation,” had to accept a minority stake, could not require distribution or sales rights, and had to respect the producers’ valuation. The governance scared off some candidates: “Usually, you have one person or company who gets the shares and the control.”

Anton was a known quantity. Bessi has known the company since it was created 15 years ago to implement a state financing deal for Studiocanal, and his own résumé runs through the big European groups: chairman and CEO of Newen Studios/Studio TF1 until 2024, group COO at Studiocanal and senior posts across Canal+. Anton’s own slate includes In Love, with George Clooney and Annette Bening, Pumping Black, with Jonathan Bailey and Natalie Portman, and the crime thriller My Darling California, with Jessica Chastain, Mikey Madison and Don Cheadle.

The pitch to buyers is scale. Bessi wants The Creatives to be a “one-stop shop” where major distributors and streamers find “elevated content and festival movies and series” from several countries at once, “instead of them going country by country.” The catalogue backs the claim: more than 140 festival and awards wins, including Haut et Court’s Palme d’Or winner The Class, Spiro’s Venice Grand Jury Prize winner Foxtrot, Komplizen’s Oscar-nominated Toni Erdmann, Razor Film’s Oscar-nominated Waltz With Bashir, Unité’s multi-César winner Souleymane’s Story and Good Chaos’ Sisu films.

All agreements are signed. The Creatives will be formally created at closing, after technical steps expected to take a few months, and Anton’s investment adds access to equity financing for the group.

The new money comes with no claim on distribution or sales, so the producers behind a Palme d’Or and two Oscar-nominated films have raised equity without handing anyone the control Bessi says is normally the price. What they keep, in his words, is the right “to produce and attract talent.”

Tags: European cinema, Anton Studios, Haut et Court, Komplizen Film, Romain Bessi, studio deal