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Koch brothers are silent investors in "Wonder Woman"

Kai Ryssdal and Sean McHenry Aug 10, 2017
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Koch brothers are silent investors in "Wonder Woman"

Kai Ryssdal and Sean McHenry Aug 10, 2017
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One hears a lot that in its politics, Hollywood tends toward the liberal. The Kansas-based Koch brothers (whose company is an on-again, off-again underwriter of this program) tend toward conservative politics. And one would imagine that the twain would never meet. But movies are expensive to make, so producers need money. And movies can be profitable, and people with money like profit, which is where the Koch brothers come in.

Their participation in RatPac Dune, a company providing what’s called slate financing — and also a company once run by now Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — was revealed by Tatiana Siegel in The Hollywood Reporter.

“It shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, to anybody,” Siegel said in an interview with Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal. “There is no shortage of really rich people who come in and invest in various ways in Hollywood. But what’s different here is usually people who do that, it’s because they want to get a good seat at the Oscars and really make a show about it, because they know they’re not going to make a ton of money out of it,” Siegel said. “But in this case, they’re not doing it for show. They are just sort of like, ‘OK, let’s put some money here and see what happens.'”

Click the audio player above to hear the full story.

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