Italian TV rights to James Bond films up for grabs

The rights to broadcast James Bond film on Italian television are up for grabs. The 007 movie rights are currently held by the financially collapsed Cecchi Gori Group film library and are being sold off.

Cecchi Gori was officially ruled bankrupt by a Rome court last year after being awash in red ink for over a decade since branching out from film into television and acquiring the A.C. Fiorentina soccer club in the 1990s in an attempt to emulate Berlusconi that went horribly wrong - reports Variety.

In 2002 creditors, including Merrill Lynch and several Italian banks, took legal action, as the group's debts spiraled to more than Euros 600 million ($787 million).

A court-appointed bankruptcy administrator will be selling off in coming months a second, more highly valued, portion of the Cecchi Gori library, comprising most of the James Bond franchise, local Oscar winners "Life is Beautiful" and "Mediterraneo," and other, more recent, Italian hits.

At this stage Cecchi Gori's exhibition assets, which include the Cecchi Gori Fine Arts Cinema in Los Angeles and Rome's lucrative Adriano multiplex, have been excluded from the bankruptcy proceedings.

Today, Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset won a bid for TV rights to a large chunk of the lesser valued Cecchi Gori Group film library, plunking down Euros 6 million ($7.9 million) for the 183-pic package made up largely of popular Italo comedies from the past few decades but also including local rights to Hollywood fare such as the "Terminator" franchise and multiple Oscar winner "The English Patient."

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