Labatt Breweries will likely end up owning all of The Partners’ Film Company now that a group of minority shareholders has declined an opportunity to buy the company.

Cinematographers George Morita and Stanley Mestel and executive producer Michael Schwartz recently told Partners’ president Don McLean they will not exercise their option of buying Partners’.

That means Labatt, which currently owns 50.01% of the company, will probably buy the remaining shares at a price the brewery set on April 8, the day Labatt and the minority group agreed to a buy-sell agreement.

The three Partners’ shareholders also told McLean that they intend to open their own production company. A name and location have yet to be finalized.

The new company will open with the three, producer Paola Lazzeri and, it appears, two Partners’ directors, Dan Hackett and Shin Sugino.

McLean says it’s too early to say what’s now in store for Partners’.

‘I’m not prepared to make any comments,’ says McLean. ‘I wish them the very best and hopefully we’ll still be associated in a number of areas’ such as post-production facilities and rental of camera packages.

It’s expected to take about two weeks for the formal parting to be finalized.

Then, if original plans that were conceived under the Supercorp umbrella are carried out, Partners’ will begin some form of blending of services with Labatt’s long-format production company, Skyvision Entertainment.

Apparently, it was this general policy direction – the desire to bring commercial production resources and television programming closer together – which led to the schism within Partners’.

‘Philosophically, they were going in a direction that we didn’t feel comfortable with,’ says Schwartz. ‘They were showing an interest in longer format work, which doesn’t mean that we’re not interested in doing some kind of sponsored programming. But we will associate with other companies to do that.

‘The focus of our company is going to be advertising and advertising-related production,’ says Schwartz.

For Morita, one of the seven original shareholders in Partners’, the move ends a 26-year association with McLean.

‘The decision to break with Don was very difficult,’ says Morita. ‘We are friends and we’ll always be friends. I have a lot of respect for Don.’

But Morita says he and several other shareholders felt they would be ‘diluted as partners in the sense of having a say’ in the new Partners’ vision. He says he felt the time had come for ‘a fresh new start’ and: ‘I really wanted to be a partner again.’

Mestel, who joined Partners’ when it was opened more than 15 years ago and became a partner in 1981, says he’s also keen on being part of a new production startup.

‘It had become a bit of a case of the tail wagging the dog, in that we had to find work to service the facility rather than the other way around,’ says Mestel. ‘We don’t want to get to that point. We simply want to be able to quote fairly and give clients maximum value on the screen.’

Schwartz envisions the new company as a place that will not only nurture new talent, but will also, if necessary, help established directors renew their careers.

‘We don’t want to just represent directors,’ says Schwartz. ‘We want to be in a position to help manage careers, both in terms of bringing along new talent and in helping established directors.

‘We want everyone associated with the company to feel that if the company does well, we all do well.’