Blue Rider Entertainment is one of the most prolific and successful independent production and financing companies in the entertainment business, with more than 118 movies and TV projects to its credit since the Company was formed in 1991.

During that time, Blue Rider co-founders Jeff Geoffray and Walter Josten have developed expertise in nearly every aspect of production and distribution, including US Theatrical Distribution, International Sales and Production Services. They have served in the roles of producers, executive producers and line producers. Since its inception, Blue Rider Finance has worked on the cutting edge of independent film financing, utilizing Pre-sales, Gap Financing, Tax Credits and other benefits to shoot pictures in nearly every region of the world.

Blue Rider Pictures has grown into the premier Bridge Financing resource for independent movies, providing more than $97 million in short-term funding to more than 100 films, with budgets ranging from $2 million to $42 million, representing an aggregate of $687 million in production.

As a result of successes in the Bridge Financing sector, Blue Rider expanded the parameters of its lending appetite to include new types of financing, such as Gap and Super Gap loans in conjunction with banks and bond companies, Acquisition funding for international sales companies, Post-Production Finishing funds for producers, Working Capital for distributors and production companies, Collateral Shortfall Loans and P&A (prints and advertising) funding for U.S. theatrical releases. The Company also continues to fund against receipts of future tax credits of all kinds and from numerous regions on an ongoing basis. As examples, Blue Rider was able to provide both Bridge and Collateral Shortfall loans for John Boorman’s The Tiger’s Tail, starring Brendan Gleeson and Kim Cattrall, a film that bowed at the 2007 Palm Springs Film Festival. The Company also provided Post-Production Finishing Funds for Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn, starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, which had a very successful 2007-2008 run domestically, overseas and on DVD (grossing more than $35 million).

Between 2006 and 2008, Blue Rider financed 33 movies with budgets totaling more than $273 million. Blue Rider-financed projects include the prison-escape actioner Rescue Dawn, the romantic comedy Then She Found Me, the sci-fi actioner Outlander, the jewel-heist thriller Flawless,  the romantic comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman, the historical drama Heart of the Earth, the crime thriller The Flock, the historical romance Death Defying Acts and the family film The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.

Scores of major and independent distribution and production companies around the world have called upon and benefited from Blue Rider’s expertise in development, production and/or financing. They include: Sony, Disney, Warner Bros., Fox, Paramount, Walden Media, MGM, ABC, HBO, Showtime, Miramax, Dimension, Lionsgate, First Look Media, Kathy Morgan International, Hallmark, Fox Family Channel, Bauer Martinez Studios, Fries Film Group, Think Film (Canada), Handmade Films (UK), Canal + (France), TF1 (France), VIP Media (Germany), Studio Babelsberg (Germany), Medusa (Italy), Arclight (Australia), Daybreak Pictures (New Zealand) and Merlin Films (Ireland).

The Company also works on a regular basis with many of the major players in the film finance community. In the past few years Blue Rider has been involved with banks such as Comerica, Royal Bank of Scotland, Mercantile, Bank of Ireland, Union Bank, City National Bank, Allied Irish Bank, HSBC, LHO/Imperial Capital Bank, CIBC and National Bank of Canada. Additional financing partners have included the William Morris Agency, Future Films (UK), Matrix (UK), Invicta (UK), Gasworks (Isle of Man) and Delux Films (Luxembourg). The Company has long-standing relationships with all of the major bond companies, including IFG, Film Finances and CineFinance.

Blue Rider has interacted successfully with governmental bodies in many of the countries where it has produced its films or has assisted with financing, including Telefilm in Canada, the DCMS in the UK and the Puerto Rico Film Commission.

THE PRINCIPALS

Blue Rider co-founders Walter Josten (CEO) and Jeff Geoffray (CFO) have been producing motion pictures and television projects together since 1984—films that reflect their unique artistic visions and their dedication to entertaining a world audience. The budgets of their films have ranged from a few million dollars to over a hundred million dollars, and the films have been released in every medium, in virtually every corner of the world. Some of Blue Rider's major claims to fame are its major production involvement in Around The World In 80 Days, Holes, Jim Cameron’s Ghosts of the Abyss, Helen Hunt's Then She Found Me, Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, Jack London's The Call of the Wild, Silver Wolf, Shergar, Eloise At the Plaza, Thief Lord, Behind the Red Door, Modigliani, The Groomsmen and Asylum. The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie (starring James Caan and Gena Rowlands) garnered Josten a 2004 Emmy award.

While the Company’s expertise in financing is second to none, Josten and Geoffray’s passion to make great movies and tell important stories is the driving force behind all their work. Releases that reflect this passion include Uncommon Kindness: The Father Damien Story - a documentary about the 19th-century priest who founded the first humane leper community - and O Jerusalem, a drama about the aftermath of the UN partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the birth of the state of Israel. O Jerusalem had a seven-week run in U.S. theaters and earned $2.4 million in nine other countries. Josten and Geoffray have worked with dozens of award-winning actors, including Robin Williams, Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Ian Holm, Demi Moore, Sir Michael Caine, Richard Gere, Claire Danes, Andy Garcia, Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ving Rhames, Sigourney Weaver, Gena Rowlands, Kiefer Sutherland, Avril Lavigne, Kim Cattrall, James Spader, John Cleese, Rodney Dangerfield, Brendan Gleeson, Christopher Lloyd, Colin Firth, Burt Reynolds, Rod Steiger, Tom Berenger, Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilley, Stacy Keach, Luke and Owen Wilson, Freddie Prinze Jr., James Caan, Jon Voight, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Frank Langella and Richard Dreyfuss. Some of the writers and directors the principals have been proud to work alongside include Gillian Armstrong, Andy Davis, Frank Coraci, Jim Cameron, John Boorman, Sidney Furie, Amy Heckerling, Werner Herzog, Chuck Leavitt, Michael Radford, Jerry Schatzberg, Kevin Tenney, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Edward Burns, Ethan Wiley, Matia Karrell, Claire Simpson, Ehren Kruger, Helen Hunt, Jeremy Leven and Eric Nicholas.

THE COMPANY NAME

Der Blaue Reiter (German for "The Blue Rider") was an art movement started by Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky in Europe just after the turn of the 19th-to-20th century. The artists who took part were considered to be the pioneers of abstract art, and their work was characterized by exuberant color and profoundly felt emotion. Coming from a number of European countries, the painters, writers, poets and composers who joined The Blue Rider dedicated themselves to the search for a common spiritual basis in a new international culture.

The first exhibitions of The Blue Rider included works by movement founders Kandinsky and Marc, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Henri Rousseau, Robert Delaunay, Arnold Schönberg, Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh. These artists, who early in their careers broke from the mainstream, were later to become the driving force behind modern art as we know it today.

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