Michael Hackman

In the film world, the “man behind the curtain” is often Michael Hackman. 

His thematic investment philosophy has led to Hackman Capital Partners (HCP) becoming the largest owner and operator of independent film and television studios globally, with such celebrated properties as Television City, Culver Studios and the former Studio City. 

There’s diversification in HCP’s $10 billion in assets under management — General Mills, Erewhon, and Sephora are its tenants, too. But the firm’s main playbook has been to buy media production space — mostly in L.A. but expanding elsewhere — and modernize it in terms of both technology and tenants, and then reap the rewards. 

In August, HCP and its co-owners refinanced Raleigh Studios, a Melrose Avenue campus with 13 soundstages that is 94 percent leased to Netflix, via a fixed-rate, three-year, interest-only loan. The redevelopment of Television City in Fairfax continues to go forward, with the Los Angeles City Council in January approving a plan for 1.4 million square feet of new construction, focused on entertainment industry office space and new soundstages, in exchange for concessions such as affordable housing and new bike lanes. 

And Hackman’s company has reportedly been in talks to refinance a $1 billion loan on the Radford Studio Center in the San Fernando Valley. The onetime home of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Seinfeld” is the subject of a redevelopment plan that would make it the first all-electric studio in Los Angeles.

All good moves by the Ohio transplant — “Every Rose Bowl, I was in a winter jacket,” he once told Commercial Observer — who has been an Angeleno since the late ’70s. And all ways of surviving during a tough part of the post-pandemic business cycle, as interest rates have risen while the share of movies, streaming and TV being made in the L.A. area has dropped.