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Fractional General Counsel · Business & Legal Affairs · Los Angeles

Studio-grade dealmaking for creative companies.

Eric Kessler is a California attorney and business affairs executive who has negotiated talent, production, rights, financing, and corporate deals from inside major studios and media companies. That experience now works for production companies, talent, creators, and the businesses growing alongside them.

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A Los Angeles practice representing companies and individuals across entertainment, media, and the businesses that grow around them.

The practice spans development, production, financing, distribution, licensing, merchandising, and branding, along with the corporate and commercial contracting every operating business runs on.

Clients include production companies and studios, writers, directors, showrunners and on-camera talent, creators and creator-led businesses, brands and agencies, media and technology startups, and founders building companies outside the industry entirely.

The premise is simple. Understanding the business is what makes the legal advice useful. The goal is to serve as counsel and as a working part of how decisions get made.

Who I work with

Different clients, the same problem. The deal is business before it is paper.

Production companies & studios

Development slates, production and co-production structures, financing, distribution, and delivery, plus the legal infrastructure to run them.

Talent & representatives

Writers, directors, showrunners, producers, and on-camera talent negotiating personal services, overall, and first-look agreements.

Creators & creator-led businesses

Creators building real IP and real companies, and increasingly sitting across the table from studios and platforms that want to acquire both.

Animation, kids & family

Series and feature work, IP licensing, merchandising, and publishing tie-ins, including the approval and clearance layers that come with them.

Brands, agencies & branded content

Sponsorship, integration, and co-promotion deals, talent and influencer agreements, and content produced with and for brand partners.

Media & technology startups

Formation, equity, commercial and SaaS contracting, privacy and data terms, and the first set of templates a company actually needs.

Founders & small businesses

Owner-operated companies that have outgrown handshake agreements but are nowhere near a full-time legal hire.

Investors & boards

Diligence on IP and chain of title, governance, and transaction support for media and entertainment investments.

Executives

Employment, severance, and exit negotiations for executives moving between studios, networks, platforms, and independents.

A different kind of counsel

Your business deserves a legal partner, not just a lawyer.

Large firms are built for high-stakes litigation and one-off transactions. The deals that actually shape a business land on your desk every week, and most of them never reach a lawyer who understands what is behind them.

Eric has built and run legal departments from the inside. He knows what good looks like, what each side of the table is really asking for, and why.

That means practical counsel on rights and production, talent and creator deals, brand partnerships, corporate transactions, and long-term IP strategy, delivered as an integrated part of how you make decisions rather than as a separate approval step.

Advice is proportional to the actual risk. The job is to get the deal done on defensible terms, not to produce a list of reasons it cannot be done.

Practice Areas

Where the work gets done.

01

Development & Production

The full deal lifecycle from pitch to delivery: options and purchases, underlying rights, first-look and overall deals, development and production services agreements, co-production and co-financing structures, and guild compliance across WGA, SAG-AFTRA, DGA, and IATSE.

02

Talent, Creator & Executive Agreements

Personal services agreements for writers, showrunners, directors, producers, and on-camera talent. Creator and influencer deals. Executive employment, overall, severance, and exit negotiations. Credit, contingent compensation, approvals, and the terms that get skipped and later matter.

03

IP Rights & Licensing

Book-to-screen and life rights, chain of title, franchise development, merchandising, publishing tie-ins, trademark, and anti-piracy enforcement. Rights structured to hold value across every window and format, including the deals that follow the one in front of you.

04

Distribution & Content Licensing

Domestic and multi-territory rights grants across subscription, ad-supported, and free ad-supported platforms. Windowing, exclusivity, holdbacks, revenue share, and delivery, plus the platform and audience-facing risk that travels with digital distribution.

05

Brand, Sponsorship & Branded Content

Sponsorship, integration, and co-promotion agreements between brands, agencies, platforms, and producers. Talent and creator participation, usage and exclusivity windows, approvals, and the licensing terms on both sides of a branded slate.

06

Corporate & Commercial

Formation, governance, equity and financing, strategic partnerships and joint ventures, acquisitions and investments, diligence, vendor and sales agreements, SaaS and technology licenses, data processing agreements under CCPA and GDPR, and website terms and privacy policies.

07

Fractional General Counsel

Executive-level legal judgment without a full-time hire: day-to-day counsel to founders and creative leadership, cross-functional deal management, supervision of outside specialists, and a single point of continuity as the company grows.

08

Legal Operations & Templates

Contract templates, negotiation playbooks, intake and approval workflows, and signature and records processes. Built once so a fast-moving team can execute routine deals without legal becoming the bottleneck.

Representative Experience

Deals across film, television, animation, brand, and corporate.

Work for studios and streamers, production companies, networks, publishers, brands, creators, and the executives and founders on the other side of those deals.

Matters are described by type and structure. Client names, counterparties, project titles, and deal terms are omitted.

Scripted Television & Film

  • Negotiated the full range of series agreements across a high-volume scripted slate, including personal services agreements for writers, showrunners, directors, and on-camera talent, production services agreements, and underlying rights, for major streamers, broadcast and cable networks, and international partners.
  • Structured underlying rights with a national news organization for a drama adapted from its investigative reporting, then negotiated cross-border production and talent deals and handled politically sensitive material across two jurisdictions.
  • Drafted and negotiated key writer and producer agreements across three seasons of a music-driven biographical drama, carrying life rights, catalog, and full guild compliance.
  • Negotiated international co-production agreements, tax incentive structures, and star contracts for a feature shot across two continents.
  • Negotiated an overall scripted deal with an A-list showrunner, along with agreements involving a number of other established showrunners.

Rights Acquisition & Development

  • Sourced a shortform series with a large existing online audience and structured its adaptation into premium longform, including underlying rights, co-production, and creator and showrunner agreements. Took an executive producer credit for sourcing and closing the deal.
  • Negotiated and closed the acquisition of television rights to a debut novel, structuring rights, adaptation, and talent agreements with the author attached to adapt and showrun.
  • Papered first-look and development deals with animation studios, book publishers, an artist estate, and consumer brand partners.

Kids, Family & Animation

  • Served as lead counsel on preschool and kids animated series adapted from established book and social properties, covering production, talent, IP licensing, and merchandising across multi-episode orders and international rollouts.
  • Handled deal work and renewals on an animated series and two feature films for a cable network and its streaming platform.
  • Built branded content integrations extending kids IP into consumer products and platform partnerships.

Brand, Sponsorship & Partnerships

  • Negotiated brand integrations, talent agreements, and distribution rights for a global consumer brand's branded film anthology, released through a major streaming and device ecosystem.
  • Negotiated sponsorship, talent, and distribution agreements for a short-film festival run with a social platform and a software company, holding platform and brand compliance while supporting emerging filmmakers.
  • Closed a first-of-its-kind content partnership with a national youth organization, creating a multi-platform family slate spanning scripted series, unscripted programming, features, and documentary.

Corporate, M&A & Strategic Investment

  • Supported the full acquisition of an established production company, a strategic investment in a documentary banner as part of a nonfiction expansion, and minority investments in production and technology companies.
  • Supported a minority investment round led by a private equity firm, and provided business affairs support aligning corporate transactions with long-term creative strategy.
  • Drafted and reviewed corporate governance documents, compliance certificates, payoff letters, and IP transfer agreements across mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, and joint ventures.

International & Distribution

  • Led international projects end to end, structuring co-productions, local production services agreements, and rights exploitation, and negotiating incentive structures and compliance for shoots in Australia, Mexico, Europe, and Asia.
  • Negotiated content distribution and copyright licensing across subscription, ad-supported, and free ad-supported streaming platforms, including multi-territory rights grants, windowing and exclusivity structures, and revenue share arrangements.

Talent & Executive Representation

  • Represented executives in employment, overall, and exit negotiations at studios and networks, after years working the other side of those deals in-house.
  • Advised creators and creator-led businesses approached by studios and platforms seeking to acquire their IP, their companies, or both.

Legal Operations & Commercial

  • Built legal operations from scratch as a company's first legal hire, developing contract templates, negotiation playbooks, and intake and approval workflows adopted company-wide, and supervising outside counsel.
  • Handled day-to-day commercial and data contracting alongside a production slate, including inbound SaaS and technology licenses, vendor and sales agreements, and data processing agreements under CCPA and GDPR on counterparty paper.
  • Managed trademark, anti-piracy, and IP protection matters, and drafted and maintained website terms of use and privacy policies.
About

Eric D. Kessler

Eric D. Kessler

Eric is a California attorney and business affairs executive with more than a decade negotiating talent, production, rights, financing, and corporate deals across film, television, animation, digital, and branded entertainment.

Most recently he was Senior Vice President of Business & Legal Affairs at Lion Forge Entertainment, where he was the company's first legal hire and led business and legal affairs across live-action, animation, and digital projects, from acquisition through delivery and global exploitation. Before that he spent five years at Imagine Entertainment, ultimately as Vice President, Business & Legal Affairs and Corporate Counsel, working across a high-volume scripted slate for major streamers and networks alongside the company's corporate and commercial contracting. He began in business affairs at WarnerMedia and Turner, supporting scripted, unscripted, animation, and new media projects for TNT, TBS, and HBO Max Originals.

He founded The Law Office of Eric D. Kessler to bring that experience directly to the companies and creators on the other side of those deals, at a scale and cost that fits how they actually operate.

Admitted
State Bar of California
Law
Southwestern Law School, J.D., 2017
Undergraduate
Babson College, B.S., Business Management, 2011
Executive Education
Columbia Business School, Certificate in Mergers & Acquisitions, 2022
Based
Los Angeles, California
Prior
Lion Forge Entertainment · Imagine Entertainment · WarnerMedia / Turner
Insights

Practical legal thinking, from the deal table.

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Resources

Reference tools, kept current.

Updated August 2026

Guild Scale 2026–27

WGA, DGA and SAG-AFTRA minimums for the current contract year, arranged the way a deal gets made rather than the way the guilds publish them — searchable, with every figure sourced to the guild’s own schedule.

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WGA5/2/26 – 5/1/27
DGA7/1/26 – 6/30/27
SAG-AFTRA7/1/26 – 6/30/27
Get in touch

Let's start with what you're building.

Call or text. Tell Eric where the pressure is and what you need it to look like on the other side. He will tell you what kind of support fits, and what it would take, before anything begins.

Ongoing counsel

Monthly fractional General Counsel or business affairs support for companies that need continuity, coverage, and a single point of institutional knowledge.

Project & transaction work

A specific deal, a slate, a financing, an acquisition, or a set of templates. Scoped and priced against the work rather than the clock.

Interim & embedded

Stepping into a business affairs or General Counsel seat during a gap, a growth stage, or a transaction, and building what should stay behind.

Call or text
310.945.8172
Office
Los Angeles, California