PRODUCTION BIOS - JEFF KWATINETZ
Jeff Kwatinetz is executive producer of the new USA Network original series ROYAL PAINS.
Kwatinetz is a principal partner of entertainment management and production company Prospect Park that he founded in December 2008. In an extremely short time, Prospect Park is experiencing rapid success with its 3 major divisions: Music, Film, and Television.
Kwatinetz was previously founder and CEO of one of the largest entertainment management companies in history, The Firm. Kwatinetz founded the company in 1997, operating out of his Malibu apartment with four employees, and soon after became the world's dominant music management company. From inception through late 2008 when the Firm partners elected to dissolve, Kwatinetz was responsible for engineering the careers of world-renowned musicians, actors, writers and directors and producing entertainment content across the recording, motion picture and television sectors.
Kwatinetz and The Firm were the first to manage music clients as "brands" and their roster expanded to well over 30 multi-platinum, platinum and gold artists. Kwatinetz developed campaigns to transform artists such as Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Backstreet Boys, Kelly Clarkson, Korn and Jennifer Lopez into global brands. They discovered and established successful artists with a remarkable consistency in a hit oriented business, over 25 times taking unknown acts to platinum sales levels with a success rate of doing so greater than 80%. Even more remarkable, this was accomplished in an industry with an approximate 5% success rate. Separately, through his work with blue-chip corporations, Kwatinetz generated over $100 million in lucrative sponsorship deals for clients and marketers.
Leveraging this music talent platform, Kwatinetz and The Firm entered into film and television management, started a record label, and went on to become significant producers of television and feature films. They managed the industry's premier list of actors, directors and writers and went on to produce successful films doing over $500 million world-wide box office. Firm bands sold more than 500 million records worldwide and Firm clients grossed more than $20 billion at worldwide box offices, had 30 Academy Awards nominations and took home seven Oscars.
Kwatinetz also conceived and was the key architect of one of the music industry's most historic and successful deals - the 2004 purchase of Warner Music from Time Warner by a private equity consortium led by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital. The deal quickly resulted in more than a $1 billion profit for investors and The Firm received a $15 million compensation package for Kwatinetz' M&A work.
Kwatinetz hypothesized that his understanding of entertainment brands and The Firm infrastructure could be leveraged to create success in other arenas of pop culture. Testing this, he acquired and successfully re-launched Pony, a footwear and apparel lifestyle brand popular in the late 70s and early 80s. Under Kwatinetz, Pony achieved an 11x increase in value when the controlling stake was sold three years later.
The Firm helped launch and became a significant equity partner in VMG Partners, a $325 million private equity fund focused on consumer brands.
Kwatinetz' contributions to the field of media led to an appointment in 2007 as an adjunct professor at his alma mater, Northwestern University, to teach a graduate-level course annually entitled, "Developing and Marketing of Entertainment Content."Kwatinetz graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School with a Juris Doctor in 1991, and holds both a master's degree and B.S. in communications from Northwestern University.
