Dan has over twenty years of entertainment law experience with a particular focus on theater law, representing producers as well as playwrights and underlying rights holders. He lectures regularly on theatrical finance at Columbia University and in other venues, is the former co-chair of the Law Journal Seminars "Negotiating Contracts in the Entertainment Industry," and the co-author, with his law partner Elliot H. Brown, of "A Practical Guide to Theatrical Financing."
Prior to concentrating on the entertainment industry, Dan specialized in corporate and securities law. As a result of this background, his work with entertainment industry clients involves not only the exploitation and protection of intellectual property rights, but also mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, financings, private placements and other corporate transactions.
Dan negotiates employment contracts for numerous senior executives in a wide variety of fields, including the entertainment, media sales and advertising fields. This representation often concerns the negotiation of equity-based incentive compensation arrangements for executives in companies backed by private equity. Dan also supervises the firm’s residential real estate practice.
Dan received an A.B. degree from Brown University (1976), where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and his law degree from New York University (1980).
Representative Work:
- Production counsel for the recent Broadway and touring productions of "Legally Blonde" and “Young Frankenstein” and for the recent revivals of “Grease” and “Guys and Dolls.”
- Represents entrepreneurs, including independent film producers, seeking to raise capital through private placements.
- Represents prominent film producer in securing production loan from bank.
- Regularly negotiates partnership arrangements among owners of private companies as well as co-production arrangements among theatrical producers.
- Negotiates book publishing contracts for numerous prominent authors and distribution arrangements for independent publishers.
- Represents senior executives of public and private companies in connection with employment contracts, including profits interests and other equity-based incentives.
- Represents clients purchasing and selling co-ops, condominiums and townhouses in the New York metropolitan area, including recent transaction in excess of $20,000,000.
Practice Areas
