Legendary Pictures Closes TV Division, Ends Deal With Warner Bros. Television

EXCLUSIVE: Legendary Pictures, the successful feature financier/production company behind such tentpole franchises as The Dark Knight, The Hangover and The Clash Of The Titans, is putting its expansion into television on hold.

Legendary has proactively ended its development/production deal with Warner Bros. Television and is shutting down the TV division it launched in conjunction with the deal in January 2011. As a result, former AMC executive Jeremy Elice, who ran the department, handling Legendary’s day-to-day television activities, will be exiting the company. Legendary had been quiet on the TV front, with no significant sales despite a great brand name, a strong roster of feature titles to tap from and the backing of a big TV studio.

I hear the lack of TV output stemmed from Legendary management’s reservations towards the traditional TV development model. After testing it for a year, I hear they decided the template is not for Legendary, a company, which tends to produce content in non-traditional ways. Legendary, which is led by founder/chairman/CEO Thomas Tull and president/chief creative officer Jon Jashni, is not shutting the door completely and still intends to enter the TV space, but is cautiously exploring how and when to make such a move.

Legendary Pictures, which is coming off the releases of The Dark Knight Rises and Wrath Of The Titans, has a busy pipeline of feature projects through its co-financing part with Warner Bros., including a Godzilla reboot; 42, based on the life of Jackie Robinson; Pacific Rim, directed by Guillermo del Toro; The Seventh Son, directed by Sergey Bodrov; The Great Wall, directed by Edward Zwick; and a big-budget epic based on popular game World of Warcraft. The company’s credits also include Chris Nolan’s Inception and Ben Affleck’s The Town.