{"id":2364203,"date":"2026-04-08T15:30:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T15:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2364203"},"modified":"2026-04-08T15:30:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T15:30:29","slug":"varietys-2026-legal-impact-report-hollywoods-top-attorneys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/varietys-2026-legal-impact-report-hollywoods-top-attorneys\/","title":{"rendered":"Variety&#8217;s 2026 Legal Impact Report: Hollywood&#8217;s Top Attorneys"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<strong>Alan Sacks\u00a0<br \/><\/strong>Partner\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<strong>Hayden Goldblatt\u00a0<br \/><\/strong>Partner\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<strong>Sean Jefferson\u00a0<br \/><\/strong>Partner\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<strong>Larissa Calva-Ruiz\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>Counsel, IP finance group\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<strong>Adam Macy\u00a0<br \/><\/strong>Counsel, IP finance group<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<strong>Marcie Cleary\u00a0<br \/><\/strong>Partner\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<strong>Sasha Levites\u00a0<br \/><\/strong>Partner<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tCleary and Levites are \u201clike sisters,\u201d says Cleary, who helped JB Smoove\u2019s production company, Alternate Side Prods., with deals and the formation of a creative agency, the First Darrin. She sees creators eschewing big media for digital deals in which they can hold on to rights. Among other film and TV pacts, Levites handled all production legal and financing work on documentary \u201cAsk E. Jean,\u201d which examines author E. Jean Carroll\u2019s defamation lawsuits against Donald Trump. \u201cWe had to collaborate very closely with her attorney, Roberta Kaplan,\u201d Levites says of the challenging process. \u201cBut Robbie really worked with us to find a way to make it work. Everybody really stands behind this film, E. Jean and the story she\u2019s trying to tell.\u201d\u00a0 The IP finance group works with indie gems (\u201cJosephine,\u201d \u201cWrong Girls\u201d \u201cArco\u201d), and small distributors, including Jolt, Joint Venture, Sumerian Pictures and Mubi for \u201cThe Mastermind\u201d and \u201cTeenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.\u201d Sacks says that they have never been busier. \u201cThe money today in the private realm has become highly sophisticated,\u201d he says, noting that the proliferation of distributors has given assurance to financiers. \u201cIf there are more buyers out there, it gives them the confidence that there is a buoyancy to the pricing, which gives them an opportunity to recoup.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<strong>Biz consolidation effect:<\/strong> \u201cWhat I\u2019m concerned about is that storytelling across film and television will be of a narrower viewpoint and will not reflect the texture that comes from diverse storytellers,\u201d Cleary says.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t<strong>Necessary evil: <\/strong>\u201cFunds, structurally, on the financing side, have become more complicated, which means that the time it takes to put a deal together is longer,\u201d notes Sacks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alan Sacks\u00a0Partner\u00a0 Hayden Goldblatt\u00a0Partner\u00a0 Sean Jefferson\u00a0Partner\u00a0 Larissa Calva-Ruiz\u00a0Counsel, IP finance group\u00a0 Adam Macy\u00a0Counsel, IP finance group Marcie Cleary\u00a0Partner\u00a0 Sasha Levites\u00a0Partner Cleary and Levites are \u201clike sisters,\u201d says Cleary, who helped JB Smoove\u2019s production company, Alternate Side Prods., with deals and the formation of a creative agency, the First Darrin. She sees creators eschewing big media [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2364204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[459357],"class_list":["post-2364203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-power-of-law-2026-list"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Varietys-2026-Legal-Impact-Report-Hollywoods-Top-Attorneys.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2364203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2364205,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364203\/revisions\/2364205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2364204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2364203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2364203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2364203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}