With New Post-Production 3D Initiative, Legend3D Secures $19 Million

San Diego-based Legend3D, a private digital media and visual effects company, says it has closed on a $19 million Series E preferred stock offering.

The company, which ranks as the largest studio providing 3D conversion services in the United States, says proceeds from the offering will be used to further research and development, and to help Legend3D finance some post-production 3D film conversions through partnerships with major Hollywood studios—a new business initiative. While major Hollywood studios are excited about the trend in 3D filmmaking, they have trouble justifying the expense of converting existing motion pictures from 2D into 3D, according to Barry Sandrew, Legend 3D’s founder and chief operating officer.

Legend3D says its latest round of financing was led by Northwater Capital Management, an investment firm based in Toronto, New York, and Chicago that makes strategic investments in intellectual property. Legend3D was founded just over a decade ago with $6 million in venture funding from what is now Boston’s PAR Investment Partners, which also joined the latest round with another early venture investor, Augustus Ventures Limited.

By forming partnerships to finance new film conversion projects, Sandrew says Legend3D would share in revenue generated by 3D remakes of tried-and-true motion pictures. As an example, Legend3D screened a 4-minute preview of a 3D conversion of the 1986 blockbuster “Top Gun” in September at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam. The segment consisted mostly of Top Gun’s “danger

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.