Sir Leonard Blavatnik is planning to speculate tons of of hundreds of thousands of kilos in shopping for up media companies and producing new TV, movies and theatre, based on the boss of the Ukraine-born billionaire’s leisure empire.

Danny Cohen, the previous director of the BBC’s TV output, stated the group would additionally think about bigger acquisitions in Hollywood, pointing to the 2011 takeover of Warner Music for $3.3bn as a template for his ambitions. The music enterprise, which is partly listed, is now value greater than $16bn.

“We’ll spend a few hundred million if we can find the right things. I’ve got to keep coming to him with things that he really likes and that are going to do well and make money,” he added. “[Blavatnik] has a real love of the arts and the entertainment industry.”

Cohen joined Blavatnik to run Access Entertainment, a part of the billionaire’s Access Industries, in 2016, and has since constructed up a portfolio of investments throughout TV, movie, gaming, artwork, theatre and social media.

“The thing Len says a lot is do big things,” Cohen stated. “He likes scale. He wants us to do those things. The working model is . . . Warner Music: buying something huge at the right time at the right price. Len certainly has got the appetite.”

He stated the group would additionally have a look at extra conventional Hollywood studio companies, with some struggling beneath heavy debt burdens and needing to deal with driving returns. Shares in Warner Bros Discovery slumped earlier this month after the leisure group warned it was “unlikely” to meet its goals for paying off debt, towards the backdrop of rising rates of interest. Analysts have additionally warned over excessive money owed and difficult buying and selling situations at Paramount.

Cohen stated that they had regarded earlier than at studio companies however the costs being requested have been too excessive. Blavatnik was linked with a bid for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2010.

Cohen stated that it was not attainable to say precisely how a lot the group was aiming to spend as a result of it relied on what property got here on the market. “Len doesn’t give you a pot and says spend this. He thinks in a very strategically flexible way. We’re trying to invest right across the creative sector, across a wide range of entertainment sectors, in high-growth companies.”

He added that the standard TV and movie business was already consolidated into comparatively few bigger corporations, and likewise confronted challenges in transferring to a digitally distributed future, making some offers doubtlessly much less enticing.

Several areas will likely be in focus for funding, he stated, together with additional offers within the “creator” financial system the place people make content material for platforms reminiscent of YouTube.

Access already owns a stake in Spotter, the YouTube platform that backs creators reminiscent of MrBeast, which is now a “unicorn” value greater than a billion {dollars}.

Access can also be searching for to speculate extra in South Korea as a centre for movie and tv. “There’s probably no other non English language country, which has had so much success across music, film, television and technology,” Cohen stated.

The group owns a stake in Tripledot, a cellular gaming group, and has taken a shareholding in Portal One, a Scandinavian video games firm combining gaming and tv.

Access has additionally simply invested additional into A24, a movie manufacturing home behind the hit movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, with plans to again new movies in addition to a make-up model spin-off.

While on the BBC and Channel 4, Cohen oversaw manufacturing of exhibits reminiscent of Doctor Who and Strictly Come Dancing, and commissioned programmes reminiscent of Skins, The Inbetweeners, Call The Midwife and Happy Valley.

Blavatnik, a British-American businessman who made his cash within the privatisation of Russian aluminium and oil property, acquired Britain’s third oldest theatre, the Theatre Royal Haymarket, in 2018.

He has since invested in dozens of productions within the West End and Broadway, together with School of Rock and Hamilton, and can open a manufacturing of The Picture of Dorian Gray subsequent 12 months on the Haymarket theatre with Sarah Snook enjoying all roles.

Access needed “to add more theatres on the West End and Broadway”, Cohen stated, however “they don’t come up very often”. Post-pandemic, the Theatre Royal has returned shortly to profitability. “We’ve made money and been paying dividends.”

Blavatnik has additionally branched out into the humanities with an funding in a digital gallery in King’s Cross that exhibits large-scale “immersive” artwork — for instance, a David Hockney exhibition and a Tom Hanks present, each that includes the artists’ voices in addition to their photos. This digital artwork present is now being taken to different international locations. “It’s an authored experience, rather than just putting the pictures on the wall,” Cohen stated.

Blavatnik individually owns DAZN, the game streaming service.

Access owns one of many two industrial broadcasters in Israel, which Cohen stated was “challenging” at current given there was “virtually no advertising revenue”.

Cohen, who has been vocal on his considerations concerning the rise of antisemitism within the UK and different elements of the world after the beginning of the struggle, stated: “They’re basically showing news 24/7 and we’re just doing what we can to support the team.”