PalmStar Media Capital is a film financing company based in Philadelphia. It was founded by its CEO, Kevin Frakes in 2010.[1]
PalmStar Entertainment was co-founded in 2004 by Kevin Frakes and Stephan Paternot. Later in 2010, the CEO Frakes co-founded PalmStar Media Capital with Peggy Taylor[2] and Frank Pollifrone to focus on financing films.[3] In July 2017, PalmStar Media purchased all the assets of National Lampoon, Inc., including trademark and library of print, audio, movie, and video content.[4]
In 2016, PalmStar purchased the film rights of the Paulo Coelho novel The Alchemist for $6.5 million.[5] In July 2021, it was announced that The Alchemist would be shooting in Morocco in September 2021.[6] Shortly after, The Hollywood Reporter announced that The Alchemist had fallen apart and that the movie was no longer happening.[7] The current status of the film is unknown.
In October 2014, PalmStar signed on a multi-year financing deal with Basil Iwanyk's Thunder Road Pictures, and according to this agreement, Thunder Road would get $200 million funds from PalmStar.[8] Thunder Road would use it to fully finance and produce five to six independent films from $20 to $50 million budget range per year.[8]
In February 2015, PalmStar signed on a deal with Dylan Sellers' Rivers Edge Films to handle all company's production and development costs, and together, PalmStar would finance four to five films for Rivers Edge with budgets between $20 million to $40 million.[9] In August 2015, PalmStar signed a deal with Jeremy Renner and Don Handfield's production company 'The Combine' to finance two to three films per year for 'The Combine'.[1]
PalmStar has also partnered with Anthony Bregman's Likely Story and Buddy Patrick's Windy Hill Pictures.[1]
In 2013, PalmStar financed The Frozen Ground which grossed $5.6M at the box office off of a $27M budget.[10] In 2016, they financed Term Life starring Vince Vaughn, which grossed $244k off of a $16M budget.[11] In 2018, they financed The Catcher Was A Spy starring Paul Rudd which grossed $954k off of a $14M budget.[12]
In 2018, PalmStar financed Ari Aster's film Hereditary. In a 2022 Deadline article, producer Lars Knudsen claimed that Aster got into a battle with an unnamed financier over the final cut of the picture.[13] Knudsen stated that the financier originally hired him. Kevin Frakes was revealed to be the financier in a different interview that Knudsen conducted with The Mandy Network.[14]
In 2014, PalmStar filed a tantalizing lawsuit, claiming that the casting of Ben Affleck in The Accountant was the result of a conspiracy that ended in the independent production company being cut out of the upcoming film. According to the complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, PalmStar — represented by William Morris Endeavor — says it entered into a binding co-production agreement on September 10, 2014, for The Accountant with co-defendants Zero Gravity Management, its principal, Mark Williams, and Lynette Howell. The deal is said to have come after months of negotiation, ever since Williams allegedly submitted the screenplay for PalmStar's consideration. But it was not long before PalmStar was “cut loose” from the production, says the lawsuit, due to some alleged shenanigans by its own agents.[15]
In 2018, PalmStar was sued by Rick Kaplan and Investigative Media Group Inc. This case was filed in New York County Courts, Supreme Court Civil Term located in Washington, New York. The Judge overseeing this case is Gerald Lebovits. [16]
In 2020, Kevin Frakes sued National Lampoon's former president Evan Shapiro for fraud, alleging in New York federal court that he owes more than $3 million for surreptitiously funneling the company's intellectual property and money from deals with Quibi, Disney+ and Comedy Central Digital into companies he controls. Shapiro later claimed that Frakes bullied him out of a job. [17]