Michael Cerenzie is the Founder/Chairman/CEO of and. Both companies are headquartered in Toronto with offices in Tribeca, New York City. Mr. Cerenzie is a Canadian-born multi-award winning film producer, financier, versatile entrepreneur and a serial disruptor who has excelled across a wide range of creative endeavours. He has over 25 years of experience focused on the entertainment business: creative development, producing, and financing for live theatre, film, television, technology, and tech innovation. He counts on a diverse network of creative and business relationships domestically and internationally, keen industry acumen, and a pervasive awareness of developing trends and new opportunities. Finance Profile Cerenzie has raised in excess of of $1.2 billion from private equity sources, institutional investors and banks both foreign and domestic over the past 15 years. The funds raised were utilized for creative development, production, financing (gap, bridge, and completion), and investment in films and various entertainment companies. Additionally, some of these monies were dedicated to incubating entertainment technology companies in the US, India, South Korea and Japan, as well as to financing other independent producers and filmmakers and to strategic partnerships with specific Hollywood studios on a distribution level. As a resource uniquely qualified to speak end-to-end on both creative and financial topics, Cerenzie has contributed as on-air entertainment industry expert for Fox Business News, CNBC and Bloomberg.com as well as in print for numerous financial and trade publications including Forbes, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Business Journal. Film Profile Cerenzie's films have premiered or competed at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Deauville, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, Sundance and Toronto International Film Festival. They have been awarded top honours from the American Film Institute, the Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York Film Critics Associations, and the Independent Spirit Awards among many others. Additionally, his films have made it onto 82 critics' Top Ten Films of the year. He has collaborated with many of the most talented and legendary filmmakers in the business, including Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, Jim Sheridan and Martin Scorsese. Further, Cerenzie has produced an extensive list of Academy Award winning and nominated actors that include Philip Seymour Hoffman, James Franco, Michael Shannon, Matt Dillon, Albert Finney, Amy Ryan, Marisa Tomei, James Caan, Ethan Hawk, Bob Hoskins, Stellan Skarsgård, Natascha McHelhone, Gerard Depardieu, and Harvey Keitel. i
A brief history... UNITY UNITY Productions, was Michael s first entertainment company, founded in 1998 and headquartered at the Tribeca Film Centre in NYC on the heels of wide critical acclaim producing live theatre that garnered an Obie Award in NYC and, for his LA productions, another twenty Dramologue Awards between 1991-1995. From 1995-1998 Michael worked under a three-year "first look" deal at HBO, where he reported directly to Chris Albrecht. At HBO, Michael's very first pitch resulted in his co-creating and co-writing a one-hour drama along with Emmy Award winners Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson. He also co-created and developed a one-hour western drama with the late filmmaker Geroge Cosmatos who had just found great success in directing Tombstone featuring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer. Later, Cerenzie branched into the documentary format and went on to co-create several documentary series for Sheila Nevins, Head of Documentary and Reality programming for HBO. Wanting to focus on film, Cerenzie moved UNITY to Los Angeles for the purpose of establishing a truly unique independent film production/finance company. The philosophy of the company was to focus on developing, producing, and financing the creative talents of both new and veteran filmmakers on both coasts. The company's mandate was to foster creative talent while utilizing unique financing models developed by Cerenzie with unwavering intent to protect the integrity of creative partners, support these talents, and produce them outside of the studio system and outside the overbearing reach of the same, only utilizing the studio for its distribution platform. The design was to ensure that the genesis of their ideas and creative concepts and their production could be incubated, produced, and delivered without outside interference. Keeping to this philosophy, UNITY was officially launched when Cerenzie negotiated his first deal with German film fund Cinerenta GMBH, a $325 million USD tax-based fund. He negotiated and partnered with MGM/UA to create a multi-picture deal through which Cinerenta funded 65% of the budget and MGM/UA funded 35% against the domestic rights of the films and put up the P&A (Print and Advertising costs) for each film. This deal was unprecedented given that Cerenzie had never even produced a film before and had no contacts in Hollywood at the time in the film business. UNITY went on to produce their two first films: Deuces Wild, Executive Produced by Martin Scorsese, and City Of Ghosts. The deal and the films produced by Cerenzie caught the full attention of Hollywood. Variety Magazine named him as the Producer to Watch in their annual "50 Creatives in Hollywood" listing, immediately cementing his maverick reputation and his position at the forefront of a new breed of producers, able to astutely helm both the creative and financial aspects of the business. The strength of their strategic operations lay in the fact that UNITY financed 100% of their development and a minimum of 65% of every production budget through an ii
equity/debt mix from that point onwards. Under Michael s skillful guidance, UNITY developed, partnered, produced, and financed more than a dozen feature films. "The Devil" Cerenzie's latest film was, at that time, the highly critical acclaimed Before The Devil Knows You re Dead, directed by the legendary filmmaker Sidney Lumet, a film that would garner Cerenzie the Maverick Producer Of The Year Award by the CAIFF. Leading the cast, Philip Seymour Hoffman noted, This film is an homage to the beautiful city of New York. It means so much to me. The film also boasted Oscar nominees and winners Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Rosemary Harris, Albert Finney, Michael Shannon and Amy Ryan; however, Cerenzie still found himself displaced in the Hollywood system, a system he felt was archaic, weighted and severely flawed. I felt that after making The Devil with Sid that I had finally reached the creative bar I had been seeking and the bar against which all of my future productions should be measured against. For me, The Devil (Cerenzie's regular shorthand for the film) started out to be the bar for filmmaking, but in the end I came to realize it was much more than that: It was, indeed the bar, but the one that would be the measure for all of my creative and entrepreneurial endeavours. More than that, it would be the standard for my own talent, the decisions I make, and especially whom I would take on as creative and financial partners. I see now, looking back, that it was Lumet, the man, the artist, the friend, and the mentor who had become the bar, not the film, and Sidney was a giant. From UNITY... onward In late 2008, on the strength of the UNITY experience, Michael decided to form the partnership that made up Cerenzie-Peters Productions (CP), for which he was the Co-Chairman/CEO of the company. CP negotiated a three-year "first look" deal at Paramount Studios. Though Cerenzie was excited about having such a coveted deal with a major studio, being the independent-minded producer he is, he raised an additional $3 million under his UNITY banner for development to build a more extensive and diverse development slate, to seek out strategic partnerships, and to secure more creative freedom. Under Cerenzie s sole guidance and using his own funds raised through UNITY, several high profile scripts were developed and set up during this time, including Black Mass, the story of the infamous Whitey Bulger, to which Cerenzie attached five-time Academy Award nominee Jim Sheridan to co-write and direct and a biopic on Steve McQueen for which he hired writer Jesse Wigatow. The project attracted such praise that two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner attached himself immediately based on the script. Additionally, under CP, Cerenzie set up the iii
film A Boyfriend For My Wife which was being adapted from the original Argentinian film for Steve Carrell and his Carousel Pictures enterprise at Warner Bros. Two years into the partnership, Michael disbanded Cerenzie-Peters, continually seeking to create a more expansive concept and to build an environment that did not restrict his creative goals and ambitions. Following this instinct, he moved back to NYC to refocus on finding, developing, and producing the new voices of filmmakers in NYC...back to where he had started some twenty years earlier. It was a calling that kept him up at night. The Crash... and The Birth With the world in the heavy throes of the 2007-2009 Great Recession, Cerenzie realized that the financial climate was negatively affecting even some of the most seasoned filmmakers and producers that he knew; so, he decided to expand the New York offices to include Toronto, Canada. To many, this would seem a counterintuitive or even misguided move; however, it fit squarely in his vision, that being to find a way to merge US production with Canadian production, though in a manner never before done, such that both would be positioned to prosper and to take their rightful places on a global stage. For Canada, this meant, perhaps for the very first time, a chance to brand Canada" as an entertainment export power. For NYC the vision was (and is) simple: to regain the heyday of the 60 s 70 s and 80 s, bringing back the type and weight of the films produced in that time and, most importantly, the type of filmmakers it produced. In short, this would be the return of the New York filmmaker. Cerenzie opened principal offices back in Toronto, Canada after a 25-year tenure of working primarily out of NYC and Los Angeles. His desire to create this bridge and a truly disruptive financial model was the genesis of and as an extension of UNITY s original vision. The company newly founded by Cerenzie retains all of UNITY s philosophies, mission and sensibilities while, most importantly, maintaining the high bar of world-leading quality in projects, talent, and filmmakers. Additionally, given the economic climate and resulting paradigm shift in the financing and production of independent films, television, and mini-series, Stratagem presents a distinctly unassailable and farreaching presence in the facilitation of cross-border fluidity for productions between the US and Canada and Canadian treaty co-productions under the auspices of the Canadian government and internationally approved partners. These treaty co-production agreements now number over 50 countries. As a CAVCO (Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office) producer, Cerenzie also has a keen interest and clear mandate to ensure that Stratagem develops, produces, and finances Canadian content in television and film. Stratagem is dedicated to supporting fellow Canadian producers, actors, directors and writers and in branding their content on a domestic and international basis in English, French and Aboriginal languages. iv
Cerenzie highlights the distinct competitive advantage of using mixed financial modeling that allows filmmakers to shoot the necessary establishing shots in a given city (for best creative results) and then coming north of the border to take singular advantage of some of the best and most experienced crews in the world. The result is a seamless execution with the assistance of Stratagem s creative, legal, production and financial teams, while leveraging a tax system known to be unmatched anywhere in the world. Additionally, in today s market where foreign exchange plays such a strategic role in the financing model of any film or series, Canada is in even greater demand per the strong power of the US dollar, which translates into an additional 10% or greater in direct savings. Whether a production is set in England, New Zealand, China or New York City, there are many benefits to partial shooting as either a US "runaway production" or treaty co-production in Canada today. Stratagem is opening offices in both Hong Kong and London in mid 2015. Next up: Launch of Stratagem NYC Stratagem NYC is preparing to open its doors in Tribeca and will be up and running by March 2015. The company s focus is to bring back a legitimate level of film production to the city as well as foster, promote, and produce new and veteran filmmakers to create content that is New York themed, shot in New York, or based on city-specific historical figures and events. The company will produce 1-2 films per year in the $10-40 million range. "For me it is about quality not quantity," adds Cerenzie. "We are going to produce films that we hope will define a whole new generation of filmmakers as we did in the 60 s, 70 s and 80 s. The time for that is now." v