A Rockland investment firm has made nearly $27 million on four films without collecting anything from box office revenues.
Instead, U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel ordered Creative Wealth Media Finance Corp. on March 20 to pay $26.9 million to Hudson LP and Hudson Private Corp.
In 2021, the Hudson companies, of Pearl River, sued Creative Wealth, of Toronto. They claimed they had loaned the film financing broker about $13 million for four movies.
The movies include “Bombshell,” 2019, with Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman as employees of a toxic Fox News workplace; “Capone,” 2020, with Tom Hardy as Al Capone; “Greyhound,” 2020, with Tom Hanks as a World War II Navy commander; and “The Survivor,” 2021, about a boxer haunted by memories of fighting concentration camp prisoners to survive during World War II.
The films were made by Bron Studios, of Henderson, Nevada.
The Hudson companies, operated by Christopher Conover, claimed that some of the money was used for unrelated purposes and that Creative Wealth defaulted on the loans and refused to account for profits.
Creative Wealth denied the accusations and claimed that the Hudson companies owed the Canadian company $12.9 million.
The Hudson loans were part of a larger deal whereby Creative Wealth loaned $16.5 million to Hudson LP to bail out previous loans that had no possibility of realizing returns, Creative claimed, and Hudson had repaid only $3.5 million.
Last November, Creative Wealth was deemed bankrupt in Canada and was put under control of a trustee who advised Creative’s Park Avenue New York law firm that it was no longer authorized to represent the company.
Judge Seibel gave Creative Wealth several weeks to hire a new attorney. The company missed the deadline and the judge granted a $26.9 million default judgment to the Hudson companies.
