Entertainment Law

Overview

For over 40 years, Greenberg Glusker has enjoyed a unique position as a consistent leader in entertainment transactions and litigation, an achievement in large part attributable to a team of uniquely talented, competent and responsive lawyers.

Our attorneys have practical, real-world experience as attorneys, executives and producers, previously working as industry insiders throughout all areas of entertainment.  We deeply understand the need to respond to the individual needs of our clients.

Today, Greenberg Glusker is firmly established as one of the nation’s preeminent entertainment law practices. With industry recognition from such business and peer-to-peer organizations as Chambers USA and Legal 500, our attorneys provide a wide range of personalized services, combining the personal attention of a boutique with the strength and breadth of services customarily found only in a multi-office, institutional firm. As distinguished from similarly situated firms, Greenberg Glusker employs a team approach to developing practical legal and business solutions for our clients.  Transactional attorneys also coordinate and strategize with our Firm’s litigators to anticipate and address issues that may later arise in the context of threatened or actual litigation.  

Business, tax, and bankruptcy specialists assist in structuring sophisticated business and financial transactions.  They contribute their unique perspective to transactional and litigation matters in an effort to safeguard our clients’ rights and economic positions. Our Estate Planning Group is often called upon to offer its particular expertise in establishing or modifying sophisticated, high net worth estate plans, as well as in administering estates, trusts, guardianships and conservatorships.

A consistent, well-respected and powerful force in the entertainment community, Greenberg Glusker represents a diverse stable of high-profile entertainment clients such as Tom Cruise, Jim Cameron, Warren Beatty, Oscar De La Hoya, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Hans Zimmer and United Artists.

Clients can expect a depth and breadth of support in both their transactional and litigation issues.  We handle a broad range of legal matters in all areas of entertainment and interactive media for actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, composers, recording artists, authors, publishers, independent production companies, financiers, distributors and major entertainment studios.

Greenberg Glusker attorneys recognize and regularly confront the impact of “vertical integration” on our industry. We explore creative ways to acquire, preserve and exploit intellectual property and related rights, and then vigorously defend and protect them on behalf of our clients. 

In the constantly changing landscape of the entertainment industry, with emerging technologies changing the shape of the market on what seems to be a daily basis, Greenberg Glusker has a proven track record in managing the delicate balance between consistency and flexibility.  We genuinely believe that at the heart of providing quality, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

For more information, please contact Matt Galsor, Chair of Greenberg Glusker's Entertainment Group.

Representative Experience

  • Negotiate talent agreements for movie stars, up-and-coming actors and everyone in between.
  • Structure agreements for executive producer, producers, show runners and staff members for motion pictures and television.
  • Advise and represent clients in rights pertaining to literary, format, and all other forms of rights acquisitions and licenses connected to all media.
  • Negotiate employment agreements for entertainment industry executives, talent agents and managers.
  • Manage participation audits for celebrities, directors, producers, actors and investors.
  • Provide general representation and legal work for a full range of producers, from fledgling companies to major studios in TV and motion pictures.
  • Represent composers and music libraries in acquisitions, licenses and general legal concerns.
  • Negotiate and draft agreements for licensing, recording, distribution and merchandising for music performers, composers and labels.
  • Structure unique, sophisticated multiparty agreements for the creation, licensing, and administration of music to, and on behalf of, independent television production companies.
  • Represent video game developers, producers and talent.
  • Counsel on online digital components of celebrity television network deals.
  • Advise on online and digital components of multiplatform television production/exhibition agreements.
  • Manage domain name acquisition, protection, recovery and dispute resolution.
  • Represent clients in cybersquatting protection issues and claims.
  • Represent various authors of “how to” books, fiction and non-fiction novels and textbooks.
  • Negotiate novelization agreements based on motion pictures, television and other media properties.
  • Acquire rights for the development, creation and marketing of “coffee table” photo books.
  • Negotiate agreements for ghostwriting literary works on behalf of celebrities and others.
  • Develop, secure and negotiate agreements in connection with book proposals.
  • Provide comprehensive and strategic counsel on crisis management.
  • Provide complete estate planning services.
  • Provide guidance on incorporations and business formations.