MGM Plaza
While the 2018 Winter Olympics are currently underway in South Korea, a longtime legal adviser to the International Olympic Committee is giving up the practice of law to take a top executive position in Hollywood.
Christopher Brearton, who once carried the Olympic torch ahead of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, was announced Tuesday as the new COO of Beverly Hills, California-based movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. Brearton will report to CEO Gary Barber and oversee the storied film production company’s business development and strategic growth initiatives.
Brearton, who has advised the IOC on its television contracts with NBCUniversal Media LLC, has also spent more than two decades handling deals for MGM. When the venerable movie house fell on hard financial times in 2010 and eventually filed for bankruptcy as part of a deal that shifted organizational control of the business to a team of executives from film production company Spyglass Entertainment, Brearton played a key role advising Spyglass on the matter. (Barber, the South African film producer currently serving as CEO of MGM, was a co-founder of Spyglass.)
In advising MGM, Brearton has often competed with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which has also enjoyed close ties to the movie studio. Frank Rothman, a legendary antitrust litigator at Skadden, once served as chairman and CEO for MGM. (Rothman died in 2000 at 73.) But Skadden’s work for MGM has slowed since it advised on a 2010 debt restructuring that saw MGM under new management and ownership after its subsequent Chapter 11 case.
Chris Brearton
In 2017, Brearton led a Latham team advising MGM on its roughly $1 billion purchase of the 81 percent stake it didn’t already own in the EPIX movie service from Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures Corp. and Lionsgate Entertainment Inc. O’Melveny & Myers, where Brearton spent the bulk of a legal career that began at the firm in 1998, took the lead for Lionsgate on that transaction.
Brearton’s move to MGM comes a little more than three years after he joined Latham as part of a high-profile entertainment and media team heading to the firm from O’Melveny & Myers. Latham opened a second Los Angeles office in Century City, where Brearton served as managing partner, to house its group of recruits from O’Melveny & Myers. That team included Latham partner Joseph Calabrese, the current chair of the firm’s entertainment, sports and media practice.
“We are incredibly proud of Chris and his new position at our good and longstanding client MGM,” said a statement from Calabrese. “Chris is a valued partner and friend and we look forward to continuing our work with him as he takes his place among the senior ranks of the entertainment community we serve. We wish him all the best in this next chapter of his career.”
Brearton, a former collegiate swimmer at the University of Georgia, earned his law degree from the University of Virginia after spending several years as an accountant at KPMG. While Brearton was not immediately available to discuss his decision to leave Latham for the business world—he is poised to join MGM later this month—he did thank Calabrese and his other colleagues at Latham for their “years of guidance and support” in a statement issued by MGM.
“The opportunity to join MGM is the chance of a lifetime,” Brearton said. “MGM was my first client while I was at KPMG in 1992, so the company has always held a special place in my heart. The challenge to help this great company map out a plan to grow into the future is very exciting, and I can’t wait to work with [Barber] and the leadership team and staff at MGM on a daily basis.”
At MGM, Brearton will be reunited with some former colleagues, including former O’Melveny & Myers senior counsel Lesley Freeman, who in 2016 became chief legal officer at the media company. Brearton is also the second notable partner from an Am Law 100 firm in Los Angeles to take a top Hollywood executive role within the past two months.
In early December, Joshua Grode, co-chair of the transactions practice at Irell & Manella, announced he would leave the firm to become CEO of Burbank, California-based film and television production company Legendary Entertainment. Grode soon brought with him Irell & Manella counsel Samer Kozhaya, who now serves as executive vice president of operations and corporate development at Legendary.
