Lionsgate has extended longtime CEO Jon Feltheimer’s contract for another five years through July 31, 2029.
Feltheimer signed a new deal in 2020 that potentially would keep him at the studio through Aug. 2025. On Aug. 8, Lionsgate’s compensation committee approved a new employment agreement with the studio head to keep him as CEO for another five years, the studio said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Wednesday.
Feltheimer has served as CEO of the Hollywood studio since March, 2000 alongside vice chairman Michael Burns, and that followed a nine-year run at Sony Pictures where he worked on popular shows like Mad About You, The Nanny, Dawsons Creek and Party of Five.
The latest deal replaces Feltheimer’s current employment agreement, which was amended on Aug. 12, 2022 to run through to 2025. The new contract has him earning an annual base salary of $1.5 million and being eligible for an annual performance bonus.
The first bonus starting with the studio’s 2025 fiscal year will be $7.5 million and the maximum bonus will be double that target amount. The new contract also contains terms for vested common shares, equity awards, benefit programs and other incentives.
Extending Feltheimer’s contract follows the media giant recently launching Lionsgate Studios as a standalone, publicly traded company, split off from the Starz premium platform. Launching Lionsgate Studios on NASDAQ has aimed to give the Hollywood studio options before completing a long-awaited separation of the film and TV studios and Starz, including raising fresh capital and merging with existing businesses.
Lionsgate Studios is made up of Lionsgate’s Motion Picture Group and Television Studio business, along with a 20,000-strong film and TV library. Other recent measures to boost shareholder value include giving investors an upcoming vote on a plan to collapse two classes of shares into one class and offer a 12 percent premium to class A voting shareholders at Lionsgate.
Starz in North America, where Lionsgate is focusing its growth efforts for the premium platform, ended the recent first financial quarter with 13.2 million streaming subscribers, down from 13.38 million customers at the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024.
