Anton Studios Takes Minority Stake in The Creatives

Anton Studios, the European studio led by Sébastien Raybaud, is taking a minority position as partner and investor in The Creatives, the producer alliance founded in 2021. The deal converts the strategic partnership into a formal, jointly owned holding company — the first European-rooted, producer-owned group of its scale in film and television. Romain Bessi remains CEO.

The Creatives brings together leading production companies from across Europe, plus one each in Israel and the U.S.: Haut et Court and Unité in France; Komplizen and Razor Film in Germany; the U.K.'s Good Chaos; Lemming Film in the Netherlands and Belgium; Maipo Film in Norway; Spiro in Israel; and Masha in the U.S.

Anton's slate currently includes "In Love," starring George Clooney and Annette Bening; "Pumping Black," with Jonathan Bailey and Natalie Portman; and the crime thriller "My Darling California," featuring Jessica Chastain, Chris Evans, Chris Pine, Mikey Madison and Don Cheadle. Its investment reinforces the group's financial strength and opens additional access to equity financing. The Creatives will be formally created at closing, after technical steps expected to take a few months.

Bessi arrives with three decades of experience across production, distribution and broadcasting. He built two international studios — Newen Studios/Studio TF1, which he chaired and led as CEO within the TF1 Group until 2024, and Studiocanal, where he served as group COO. Earlier, he was CFO for the Canal+ channels in France and CEO of Canal+ in the Nordics.

Speaking with Variety, Bessi said the consolidated company was "always the point."

"Five years ago, all of these producers decided that, because they didn't want anyone to buy them out and they wanted to share their expertise and contacts, they would create a form of club, where they would informally meet every month and co-produce together," he said. "They have now been doing this very successfully for years, and they decided that, because it was working so well, they would become a group."

"But they didn't know how to do it, which is when they reached out to me," Bessi continued. "Of course, creating a group costs money, so during the last year and a half I was structuring the group and looking for an investor to bring some money into the holding company."

The search for the right investor took more than a year. The Creatives fielded several offers but imposed strict conditions on any financial partner.

"We wanted a European investor, not only because of the perception, but also because of regulation. They had to be European; they had to be someone who understands the industry — meaning that you can have good years and bad years, and you need to take some risk. That was very important," Bessi said.

Securing an investor proved difficult, Bessi noted, because the model is "very new in the industry." All 17 producers in the group are shareholders and retain control. "It's very unique. Usually, you have one person or company who gets the shares and the control. Because of that, some investors were a bit concerned about the governance of the group," he said.

"We wanted someone who would agree to take a minority stake and would not require distribution or sales," he added. "Then, of course, there was a valuation, which was important for the producers, and we wanted someone who would respect that valuation. Lastly, we needed someone we knew, and I knew Anton very well because it was created 15 years ago, to implement a state financing deal for Studiocanal. At that time, I was the CEO."

The producers ultimately chose Anton. All agreements are signed, and The Creatives are, in Bessi's words, "ready to go."

That means pursuing the group's ambition of becoming the leading "one-stop-shop" production company in Europe for major distributors and streamers — a source of "elevated content and festival movies and series."

"When they come to us, they suddenly have access to many talents, many projects out of many European countries," Bessi said. "It offers a wide diversity of very good foreign content. We have the scale of the group now. It's strong enough and financially reliable, so it can be a very interesting one-stop shop for major companies instead of them going country by country to work with these leading producers."

"Our goal is to accelerate and enhance the model so we can allow the producers to develop the project they want to develop, be ready, take more risks, gather the best talent and use each other's connections," he emphasized. "We want these people to do what they do best: to produce and attract talent."

The group's track record supports the ambition. Work produced by The Creatives has drawn over 140 awards at major festivals and ceremonies worldwide, including a Cannes Palme d'Or and a Venice Grand Jury Prize, alongside multiple Academy Award nominations and wins.

Signature lead-produced titles include Komplizen's Oscar-nominated "Toni Erdmann"; Haut et Court's Palme d'Or winner "The Class"; Good Chaos' "Sisu" films, both of which topped global streaming charts; Spiro's Venice Grand Jury Prize winner "Foxtrot"; Razor Film's Oscar-nominated "Waltz With Bashir"; Maipo Film's Canneseries winner "A Better Man"; Unité's multi-César winner "Souleymane's Story"; Masha's hit series "False Flag"; and Lemming Film's six-time Dutch Academy Award winner "Sweet Dreams."

Once the technical steps close in the coming months, the newly capitalized holding will test whether producer-controlled scale — rather than studio acquisition — can become a replicable model for independent European production.