Netflix is looking to buy the Radford Studio Center, a historic television and film lot in Studio City, Calif., months after the previous owners Hackman Capital Partners allegedly defaulted on a $1.1 billion mortgage.
The streamer is in talks to scoop up the famed property, where “Gilligan’s Island” and “Seinfeld” were notably filmed, “for a fraction of its 2021 $1.85 billion sale price,” according to a Tuesday report from Bloomberg.
Per the outlet, the deal has yet to close, as the final price hasn’t been locked in — though, it’s expected to be “one-third” of its aforementioned prior sale price.
The update comes three months after it was reported that Hackman Capital Partners was set to give up ownership of Radford Studio Center after refinancing talks between HCP and its lenders failed. Goldman Sachs was said to be leading a takeover of the famous facility.
“We’ve made the difficult decision to inform the lenders that we must pause further efforts to complete the restructuring,” Hackman’s HCP Studio Fund wrote at the time in a letter to investors. “While disappointing, we do not see a realistic alternative.”
Hackman nabbed Radford Studio Center (formerly known as CBS Studio Center) from ViacomCBS for $1.85 billion in 2021. Then, in 2023, the company vowed to invest $1 billion into the lot in order to renovate it.
However, tragedy struck in 2024, when a worker, named J.C. “Spike” Osorio, fatally fell through aging wood on the property, resulting in Radford being hit with a $45,000 penalty.
As for Netflix, the streamer’s decision to invest in the property comes after it lost out on Warner Bros. Discovery. While initially named the victor in the WBD bidding war with its $82.7 billion offer in December, they were eventually outbid by Paramount Skydance and refused to match the latter’s $31 per share offer at the end of February.
“The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval,” co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said of the streamer’s previously successful offer. “However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.”
At the time, WBD CEO David Zaslav said in a statement, “I’m very pleased with the outcome we achieved for WBD shareholders and the entertainment industry. Our guiding principle throughout this process has been to secure a transaction that maximizes the value of our iconic assets and our century-old studio while delivering as much certainty as possible for our investors. We look forward to working with Paramount to complete this historic transaction.”
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