• by Wayne Friedman , September 13, 2007

MindShare will handle media buying and planning for the newly revamped studio Summit Entertainment, a new full-service theatrical studio.

The movie company is slotted to make 10-12 mid-size movies a year--with budgets expected to be anywhere from $15 million to $60 million each. The account is estimated to be worth $75 million. Former Paramount theatrical executive Robert Friedman, who is co-chairman and CEO, heads up Summit.

Rino Scanzoni--chief investment officer of Group M Media Co., the media agency holding parent of MindShare and Mediaedge:cia--worked closely with Friedman when he was a senior marketing executive at Paramount. At that time, the studio's media buying and planning account was serviced by MediaVest Worldwide. Scanzoni was a top media-buying executive at MediaVest.

MindShare's sister agency, Mediaedge:cia, has had Paramount Pictures' $550 million account since 2005. The year after Paramount acquired DreamWorks, Mediaedge also picked up that studio's $270 million media spending.

In January, MindShare lost a big studio account, Fox Filmed Entertainment--a $400 million business. Zenith Optimedia took over after a review and eventually won the entire Fox business, said to be worth $1.1 billion worldwide.

MindShare's Los Angeles office will handle Summit's U.S. theatrical movies and home entertainment releases. Currently, Summit doesn't have a lead marketing executive, but Friedman has been key in handling some of the business marketing details.

Summit's first fully distributed film with MindShare will be "P2," a thriller scheduled for a November release.

Summit Entertainment has been around since the mid-1990s, first as a foreign sales agent, then as film producer. This year, when it grabbed some $1 billion in financial money from Merrill Lynch, the studio made plans to be a full-service studio--producing, marketing, distribution and home entertainment.

Friedman is running the company, along with longtime Summit executive Patrick Wachsberger, who is co-chairman.