Lionsgate, which recently spun off its film and television studio from Starz, announced its quarterly earnings on Thursday, while the company’s CEO continued to praise the potential of AI in his public remarks to Wall Street.
Revenues at the studio behind “Ghosts” and “Hunger Games” hit $475.1 million, a 21.3% decrease from the year-ago period when Lionsgate reported revenue of $604 million. Lionsgate logged an operating loss of $46 million, down from a loss of $100.7 million in the prior-year period. Net losses shrank to $113.5 million, compared to a $163.3 million loss over the same quarter in 2024. Netflix’s earnings per-share logged a 39 cent loss, compared to a loss of 68 cents in the prior-year span.
In 2024, Lionsgate announced a deal with Runway to train an AI model on the company’s library of content, which the studio would then use to develop new material. In an earnings call with analysts, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer said: “We continue to find exciting new use cases as we apply AI to more areas of our business, increasing our productivity, generating cost savings and expanding our creative tool kit.” The Lionsgate chief did stress that he was only in favor of AI if “appropriate guardrails are established” and if copyrighted material isn’t exploited without the consent of rights holders.
During the most recent quarter, motion picture segment revenue of $276.4 million decreased from $409.4 million. The company said the decline was due to the fact that it released five wide theatrical releases during the year-ago period compared to two wide theatrical releases, “The Long Walk” and “The Strangers – Chapter 2,” over the three-month span ending in September. Segment profit of $30.5 million improved from the $1.7 million in profits that the division logged in the same period in 2024.
On the TV front, segment revenue declined to $198.7 million from $416.6 million in the prior-year period, while segment profit of $12.5 million was down from $24.4 million in the prior-year period. Lionsgate, which produced an adaptation of John Grisham’s “The Rainmaker” during the three-month stretch, said the decline in profits and revenues “reflects the timing of episodic deliveries, some of which pushed into the second half of the fiscal year.”
Lionsgate has struggled at the box office in recent years, but the studio is hoping that an upcoming slate that includes a return to Panem with “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping” and “Michael,” a biopic of Michael Jackson, will help it recapture its stride. The company also recently announced a deal with Millennium to acquire all future film and TV rights to “The Expendables” franchise, as well as worldwide distribution rights to the next “Rambo” movie.
Shares of Lionsgate were down more than 7% in after-hours trading.
