Bruce David Eisen is a veteran entertainment attorney and media executive. His legal practice focuses on the intersection of new and traditional media and the technology powering them. Eisen’s current and recent clients include Shout! Factory, Brainstorm Media, Rubicon Entertainment, Shoreline Entertainment, among others.
Eisen’s services include structuring, drafting and negotiating film development agreements, content acquisition and distribution agreements, film finance agreements, technology agreements, production legal services as well as and providing general legal/business affairs services for film, television, new media and other clients. Other recent activities include M&A legal work on multi-million dollar deals representing the Hollywood Film Awards in its sale to Dick Clark productions.
Eisen was recently engaged by the Entertainment Merchants Association (“EMA”) to represent the trade association and negotiate its agreement with Premiere Digital Services with respect to the EMA’s Video Repository. Eisen has recently negotiated with individuals and companies on behalf of his clients including, but not limited to, Allison Janney, Sean Hayes, James Cromwell, Bruce Dern, Bret Easton Ellis, James Franco, Cross Creek Pictures, Palm Star Media, Voltage Pictures, Netflix, Amazon, PlayStation Network, Showtime, Starz, HBO, and Vimeo.
In addition to his legal practice, Eisen is head of Content Strategy and Acquisitions for Nagra’s myCinema (www.mycinema.live) an event cinema initiative, that uses new technology to bring a broad variety of specialized content to movie theaters across the United States.
Eisen was one of the principals who started CinemaNow in 1999 and, as the company’s general counsel, negotiated financing for the company in excess of $40 million, negotiated CinemaNow’s agreements with over 200 content licensors including all of the major Hollywood studios as well as agreements with local ISPs, portals and film distributors to bring CinemaNow to the U.K., the Netherlands, Taiwan, Philippines, Latin America, and Singapore. In addition, Eisen was instrumental in creating CinemaNow Japan, Inc., an affiliated entity that raised over $15 million in funding.
Eisen structured the strategy and business aspects of CinemaNow’s technology requirements to enable the efficient, cost-effective distribution of content on a worldwide, video-on-demand basis and, in that regard, licensed all required technology including agreements for content delivery network services, data services, data hosting, geo-targeting, recommendation engines, web analytics, network storage and customer relation management with companies such as Akamai, Limelight, Savvis, Intel, Microsoft, EchoStar and Qwest.
Eisen received his J.D. from the University of Southern California and his B.A. cum laude with high honors in Philosophy from Clark University.