By Dawn Chmielewski
(Reuters) – Blackstone-backed Candle Media is buying Faraway Road Productions, the Israeli studio behind popular Netflix series “Fauda” and the upcoming feature film “Siege of Bethlehem,” continuing a media industry buying binge, Blackstone said on Tuesday.
Terms were not publicly disclosed. One person familiar with the matter said the acquisition was valued at under $50 million.
The deal is another big bet by private equity firm Blackstone in the streaming media industry and its voracious appetite for new content to attract new subscribers.
Faraway Road Productions is the latest in a series of acquisitions by the Blackstone-backed media company, which include taking a majority stake in Reese Witherspoon’s media company, Hello Sunshine, investing in Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s production company, Westbrook, and acquiring children’s entertainment studio Moonbug.
Candle Media executives, Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs, both former top Walt Disney Co executives, described the acquisition of the studio, founded by “Fauda” creators, Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, as another in a series of deals that invest in distinctive storytellers.
“Lior and Avi are world-class storytellers who produce exhilarating content that strikes a chord globally with audiences across cultures and languages,” Stags and Mayer said in a statement.
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski; editing by Kenneth Li and Howard Goller)
