Spielberg closes in on debt financing

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Steven Spielberg, who amid the credit crunch has been having a tough time raising money to finance his new DreamWorks studio, appears to be getting there slowly but surely.

The filmmaker’s lead bank, JPMorgan Chase, has received a commitment for about $150 million --nearly half of the $325-million loan that Spielberg hopes to have in place by late March. Only then will Spielberg’s financial partner, India’s Reliance Entertainment, begin forking over its matching equity portion so the director and his top movie executive, Stacey Snider, can start making movies.

A couple of weeks ago, Spielberg and Reliance paid Paramount Pictures about $27 million to buy 17 projects that DreamWorks had been developing at their former studio home and desperately need to get cameras rolling for their venture. This week, Spielberg began directing the big-budget motion-capture 3-D movie ‘The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn,’ starring Jamie Bell and Daniel Craig, for Paramount and Sony Pictures.

A DreamWorks spokesman said, ‘This is a vote of confidence in the new company, so we’re feeling pretty good about it.’

-- Claudia Eller