EXCLUSIVE: Eire’s Playhouse Studios has swooped for troubled UK post-production home Lipsync, saving dozens of jobs within the course of.
The Dublin-based Playhouse paid an undisclosed quantity to accountancy agency Oury Clark for the property of The Brutalist submit home, we’ve realized.
Deadline revealed in Could that Lipsync had successfully filed for the British model of Chapter 11 chapter amid the brutal panorama for post-production corporations after the pandemic and Hollywood strikes. Oury Clark took cost of Lipsync’s operations and was working to financially restructure so the submit home may pay collectors.
The Playhouse deal ends that course of and means Lipsync is not going to go the identical approach because the likes of Technicolor, which imploded earlier this yr in one of the vital spectacular company collapses of latest instances.
The Lipsync model will stay the deal retains a big proportion of Lipsync’s employees in work, although an undisclosed variety of roles will probably be laid off. The corporate had round 70 employees, who had been vulnerable to redundancy throughout the chapter course of.
“In an business the place jobs are disappearing each week, we’re glad that we had been capable of hold nearly all of individuals in jobs at Lipsync,” Playhouse Group’s Peggy Cafferty advised Deadline. Nonetheless, she added that Playhouse had nonetheless been pressured to “make some powerful decisions.”
Focus Capital Companions acted as company finance advisor to Playhouse. The Eire- and U.S.-based Focus dealt with the transaction, and has additionally raised new capital for Playhouse Studios mum or dad Playhouse Group, which is scaling its operations throughout the UK and Europe. Wallace Company Counsel acted because the authorized advisors.
Playhouse is an Irish media manufacturing firm targeted on manufacturing, post-production, and movie and TV financing. The corporate stated the Lipsync acquisition could be a “cornerstone within the Playhouse Group’s technique to construct Europe’s most superior and agile manufacturing, post-production and content material financing group.”
Playhouse has put in former Molinare Managing Director Mark Foligno as CEO, with Lorcan Kavanagh and Cafferty named Chief Income Officer and Chief Working Officer, respectively. They may collectively lead the enlargement plan.
Based in 1986 and headquartered in Soho, London, Lipsync turned effectively established in image and sound post-production, visible results, and digital intermediate companies. It labored on quite a few BAFTA- and Academy-winning movies equivalent to 2025 Oscar Finest Image nominee The Brutalist. Previous to that, it supplied submit companies to The Father, The Queen and Three Billboards Outdoors Ebbing, Missouri amongst many others, and had additionally turn into energetic in movie financing.
Managing Director Peter Hampden and monetary chief Norman Merry led the corporate, working it by means of mum or dad firm Glenthorp Ltd. Merry handed away from most cancers aged 63 earlier this month.
Playhouse’s acquisition of the storied firm comes because the submit business battles a continued and damaging downturn, with Technicolor’s closure main to very large job losses and the likes of DNEG laying a whole lot off.
At the moment’s information is a shiny spot among the many chaos. In different instance of inexperienced shoots, employees from Technicolor subsidiary The Mill partnered with Dream Machine FX to launch ARC Inventive, whereas the closure of Irish biz Windmill Lane Photos led to a number of of its execs partnering with Molinare to type Elephant Goldfish, information of which we revealed earlier this month.
