Spyglass Media Group, LLC, formerly Spyglass Entertainment, is an American film production company founded by Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum in 1998. History Spyglass Entertainment On August 21, 1998, Gary Barber, former vice chairman and COO of Morgan Creek Productions, together with Roger Birnbaum, co-founder and former head of Caravan Pictures, founded Spyglass Entertainment. The startup company signed a five-year distribution agreement with Disney, which took an equity stake. Birnbaum previously left Caravan at the prompting of then Disney studio chief Joe Roth; with Disney cutting its yearly production output, Roth recommended forming a self-financing production firm similar to New Regency Productions. After Caravan's remaining three films were released, Caravan went inactive. Its slate of film projects and an initial financial advance of $10 million to $20 million against future overages were also contributed by Disney. Spyglass's operations were formed and based at the Walt Disney Studios. On October 29, 1998, European media conglomerates Kirch Group and Mediaset invested in theatrical, video and television distribution rights to between 15 and 25 films in Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and the former Soviet Union for over five years. M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense (released 1999) was Spyglass's first film, collecting $661 million at the box office worldwide. By May 23, 2000, Disney took a 10% equity stake in Spyglass, along with Svensk Filmindustri of Scandinavia and Lusomundo of Portugal. On March 7, 2003, Spyglass Entertainment agreed to a four-year distribution output deal with Village Roadshow for Australia, New Zealand and Greece. On August 6, 2002, Spyglass Entertainment launched a television division, and it was focused on small screen projects. One of its projects was the short-lived series Miracles. That same year, it attempted to merge with smaller independent distributor Intermedia, but it failed. In December 2003, Spyglass ended its deal with Disney and agreed to a four-year first-look non-exclusive co-financing and production deal with DreamWorks. This deal was never finalized and the relationship was not working well. Thus on September 23, 2003, Spyglass instead made a similar deal with Sony Pictures. Spyglass did not move to the Sony lot, but to Murdoch Plaza in Westwood, Los Angeles. By March 25, 2010, Spyglass was acquired by Cerberus Capital Management. On December 20, 2010, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum became co-chairmen and CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which had at that time recently emerged from bankruptcy. The original plan had