Leonard Asper’s Anthem Sports and Entertainment has acquired Hollywood Suite, an indie Canadian broadcaster of four HD movie channels.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but, pending regulatory approvals, Anthem will pick up the commercial-free movie channels with mostly Hollywood titles themed from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, and distributed into 10 million homes across Canada.
Classic Hollywood movies on the Hollywood Suite menu include Tom Cruise’s Cocktail, The Abyss, the Tom Hanks comedy Turner & Hooch and Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch, starring Marilyn Monroe.
Led by longtime Canwest TV head Asper, Anthem Sports & Entertainment is a holding company that owns Gravitas Ventures, AXS TV, HDNet Movies, Impact Wrestling, Fight Network, TNA Wrestling and GameTV, among other assets.
Asper aims to combine indie distributor Gravitas Ventures, acquired in 2021, and HDnet movies, home to blockbuster epics and vintage films, with Hollywood Suite as a pure-play movie service to bolster his company’s premium film offerings on both sides of the border.
Hollywood Suite president and co-founder David Kines will continue to manage Hollywood Suite. Kines told The Hollywood Reporter the transaction will give both companies greater film buying and marketing power as they move beyond traditional TV platforms to embrace fast-growing streaming and on-demand business models.
“We’re going to draw on our respective curation skills and build and grow better channels across North America,” Kines said. Before founding Anthem in 2010, Asper was CEO of Canwest Global Communications Corp., a post he held for around 10 years.
“Anthem is focused on providing fresh and unique content offerings catering to a wide and diverse network of passionate fanbases, and the acquisition of Hollywood Suite helps us further that strategy in a major way,” Asper said in a statement.