Sony to Invest in German Movie Studio

Japan’s Sony Corp. will invest about $55 million in a movie studio near Berlin, where developers are hoping to revive a film production operation that once rivaled Hollywood.

Sony is investing in the Babelsburg studio, which was known in the 1920s and 1930s as Universal Film Co. and featured work from directors such as Fritz Lang and Josef von Sternberg and stars such as Marlene Dietrich.

The studio decayed after World War II under East Germany’s communists, but it has begun to grow again after German reunification in 1990 by concentrating on TV program production.

Studio leaders have been hoping to resume big-budget movie productions. Sony, which owns Sony Pictures Entertainment, is the first company with Hollywood operations to invest in the German studio.

“Germany is one of the most dynamic film and entertainment markets of the world,” Ken Lemberger, president of Sony Pictures’ Columbia Tristar unit, said Thursday in Potsdam, a city just south of Berlin.

“We want to take part in this development.”

The Sony subsidiary plans to make about four films a year there. And while the budgets will be relatively modest--up to about $4.4 million each--some big-name actors reportedly are being courted.

Lemberger said Sony’s investment would cover film and television, with much of the focus on German-language production.

Brandenburg state bank and German-based Commerzbank are also reportedly ready to join Sony as investors in the studio.