After two years of negotiating to buy the company from John Labatt Limited, The Partners’ Film Company will likely belong to president and cofounder Don McLean within the next 30 days.

Interbrew, which became Partners’ parent company after buying jll earlier this year, has reached an agreement that will see McLean purchase Canada’s largest commercial production house for just over $5 million.

Included in the price are two Richmond Street buildings, Studio 523 and a building currently being used for storage, and the parking lot behind Partners’ 53 Ontario Street building, collectively valued at over $1.5 million. Partners’ has also signed a five-year lease for the monster building on Ontario.

The fate of Skyvision Entertainment Group, jll’s long-form production company through which Partners’ ventured into long-form projects, has yet to be determined. Brian Ross, president of Skyvision, says talks with Interbrew to buy out the production company are expected to kick into high gear again now that the Partners’ split is resolved.

For McLean, the deal marks the end of a series of on-again-off-again talks with jll which began in 1993 when the brewer made public its interest in selling off some of its entertainment holdings. Partners’, along with entertainment companies including Skyvision, Dome Productions and Sounds Interchange, were purchased by jll in 1988 as part of the Supercorp vision.

Earlier this year, McLean, together with Skyvision executives Ross and Jim Reid and an unnamed u.s. film distributor, negotiated with jll as a group with the intent to form a single company. But the fury surrounding the jll buyout put negotiations in limbo, the film executive and his connections to the U.S. industry opted out of the group in the summer, and Partners’ decided to go it alone.

‘I’m just glad it’s over,’ says McLean.

Karen Silver, executive producer at The Artists Company Canada, says it’s difficult to know whether the split will have ramifications outside of Partners’. ‘Hopefully it creates a fairer playing field, but it’s a hard call.’

Michael Schwartz, executive producer at Avion Films and a former shareholder in Partners’, says the deal may benefit the industry. ‘It might create an environment where markups can inch their way up a little, making the industry as a whole a little healthier.’

Maxx Productions (formerly Chaos) executive producer Harve Sherman says McLean and Partners’ on their own will be the same force in the industry. ‘Not a whole lot is going to change. You’re dealing with someone who is the master of this business. He still has the same strength, the same strong connections and the same volume.’

Over the past two years, Partners’ produced two projects with Skyvision, The Painted Word tv series and a feature film, The Sadness of Sex. Skyvision was positioned to feed production directly into Partners’, but with Skyvision going solo, the infrastructure falls apart, says McLean.

Two scripts, one low-budget feature film through director Kari Skogland and the other a project with director Colin Chilvers, both represented by Partners’, are on the table and Partners’ will likely have a hand in producing both, says McLean. But from this point on, he says, film and television projects will be accepted on a rare case-by-case basis and Partners’ will act only in a roadhousing capacity.

Refuting industry speculation that production at Skyvision is on hold, Ross points to the Lands End series and a feature film, f/x, which have been in production this summer. There are two scripts in development, one with Grosso Jacobson in New York, says Ross.

It’s too early to talk about management structural changes, says McLean. First on the priority list is to meet with executives at the Partners’-owned satellite commercial and music video production companies, which include Radke Films, Imported Artists, Jolly Roger, Stripes, Revolver, Revisions, and Kessler Irish Films. Next will be setting up a group of the Partners’ post-production staff in their own business outside the walls of 53 Ontario.

In the longer term, most important will be establishing a solid management structure to run Partners’ after McLean, the don of Canada’s commercial production industry, retires by a self-appointed three-year deadline. A blue sky meeting is set for sometime over the next few weeks. AV