Magnolia Locks $100 Million In China Funding, Promotes Management Trio

EXCLUSIVE: Beverly Hills-based management company Magnolia Entertainment has promoted a trio of managers and locked in $100 million in production funding with Shanghai-based Kylin-Mandarin Enterprises. The expansion into production funding comes as Magnolia promoted managers Ari Zudkewich, Jared Ceizler, and Kauveh Khozein and given them supervisory capacities. Two other managers have left the firm.

Zudkewich will focus on the company’s literary division, which includes such clients as Daniel Espinosa, David Caspe, Scott Kosar, Kieran Darcy Smith, Fedor Bondarchuk and Matt Greenberg. Ceizler will focus on servicing Magnolia’s talent division, which includes such actors as Rachel McAdams, Rosamund Pike, Tatiana Maslany, Bill Skarsgård, Oona Chaplin, Joel Kinnaman, and Dev Patel. Khozein will act as the coordinator of the company’s talent division.

Magnolia is executive producer of the Richard Gere-Dakota Fanning independent drama Franny, which will be released in the fall.

Shelley Browning’s company becomes the latest to reach out to China for funding, as it gets further into the production game. The aim with the Kylin-Mandarin deal is to produce cross-cultural content for the international marketplace. The company is percolating several literary properties, including Julian Stockwin’s 14-book Kydd series, and a history-based television series project with BBC Worldwide Productions. Magnolia has separately partnered with Swedish music video and commercial production house Diktator as it seeks to incubate promising young directorial talent.