Q&A: Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger

January 13, 2009 Friedman was the corporate insider who spent years at Warner Bros. before becoming vice chairman and COO of Paramount, then parted ways with the studio when Brad Grey took over in 2005. Wachsberger, a gregarious Frenchman, had established himself as one of the top international sales gurus with Summit Entertainment. [...] when the duo decided to go into business together in April 2007 by reinventing Summit with domestic distribution and production, skeptics wondered how the melding of indie and studio pedigrees (backed by $1 billion available through Merrill Lynch) would fare in competing against the major studios with low- to midrange-budgeted films.

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