Cutting Edge Group founder and CEO Philip Moross. Photo Credit: Alexandra Cameron
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Cutting Edge Group have officially launched a joint venture centering on the former’s extensive catalog of film and TV music.
The companies reached out today with word of their partnership, which arrives more than two years after reports first indicated that Warner Bros. Discovery was looking to offload its music library.
In the end – and despite multiple related updates provided by purportedly in-the-know anonymous sources – that straight selloff failed to materialize. Evidently, though, WBD didn’t completely abandon the push to more effectively monetize its song-rights holdings.
Overall, those holdings (including a variety of popular theme songs as well as music from Game of Thrones, a number of comic-book films, Shawshank Redemption, and a whole lot else) are said to encompass north of 400,000 compositions and song cues.
As described by the appropriate parties, Cutting Edge is set to “co-own WBD’s vast catalog of film and TV music” under the newly minted union.
Nevertheless, Warner Bros. Discovery, which had reportedly been pushing for far-reaching licensing controls over the IP when exploring a sale in years past, “will retain creative and operational control of the music rights,” the entities clarified.
But Cutting Edge will “jointly manage” the works at hand, a portion of which will continue being administered by Universal Music Publishing Group, others of which will remain under the Sony Music Publishing admin banner.
And unsurprisingly, Cutting Edge and Warner Bros. Discovery intend to zero in “on maximizing the distribution and revenue potential” of the IP in question.
Though the businesses opted against publicly disclosing the arrangement’s financial specifics, they did note that Germany’s DWS Group “is co-investing and sponsoring the transaction alongside” Cutting Edge.
In a statement, Cutting Edge founder and CEO Philip Moross, whose company is said to possess stakes in north of 1,000 films and over 45,000 tracks, described the deal as “an incredibly exciting prospect.”
“This truly is an iconic assembly of catalogs created over almost a century by one of Hollywood’s original studios and to have the opportunity to invest in and manage this JV alongside WBD is an incredibly exciting prospect for us,” Moross said.
“This special partnership with Warner Bros. is the culmination of many years work on the part of our team at Cutting Edge and is a strong endorsement of our early conviction and specialist expertise in this area of the market,” he concluded.