In the wake of a report published Tuesday in Georgia CEO and its subsidiary Savannah CEO that raised concerns about the viability of the much-touted Medient Studioplex project in Effingham County, Medient Board Chairman Manu Kumaran contacted Georgia CEO for the purpose of refuting what he said is an erroneous claim in the article.

The article stated that, “Several attempts were made to contact officials at Medient, Titan and Shore development for comment in the past six days. To date, none has responded.” In a follow-up phone interview with Kumaran late Thursday afternoon, the chairman said, “I have no desire to offer a retort [to the Georgia CEO article]; I just wanted to point out a statement that is an error in fact: We were never contacted.”

Georgia CEO provided Kumaran with the full email thread seeking comment from Medient and its developer. Medient’s PR firm and developer were contacted six times over a five day period. Jeremy Blackburn, the developer, says he spoke with Mr. Kumaran about the inquiry.

See the thread of the email discussion below.

Earlier Thursday, a Medient press release announced that former New York State Governor David Paterson had accepted his nomination to the studio’s board of directors. Georgia CEO asked Kumaran what role he expects Paterson to take in the company outside his board duties. Kumaran said that Paterson will be helpful in obtaining the much-needed bank financing. The financing he spoke of is the $90 million needed to get phase one of the project off the ground. However, it remains unclear how Paterson is expected to sway any lending decision that Medient could not achieve on its own fiscal merits.

In late August of 2013, Kumaran and several others involved with various aspects of filmmaking conducted an elaborate tour and ground-breaking ceremony. A number of local and state dignitaries spoke with enthusiasm about the Studioplex, which is predicted to create over 1,000 new, permanent jobs with an average annual salary of $39,000. However, the only financing source cited that day by Medient officials was a $5 million line of operating credit with TCA Global Credit Master Fund LP to support film production.

Now, almost 10 months later, Kumaran tells Georgia CEO the company has zero employees but rather, has a large cadre of contract consultants in various countries around the world.

Kumaran says when it came to selecting the general contractor, several major companies were approached. Shore Development of North Charleston, S.C., a virtually unknown entity that was started just last October, emerged as the contractor of choice. Kumaran said that he has various consultants and architects working for his motion picture production company that reached some level of consensus that Shore had the latest, most robust, most cost-effective technology available to complete the massive undertaking. Very little can be found showing Shore Development as the general contractor on any project of substance and the company’s CEO Jeremy Blackburn has declined to answer questions about his company. (see below)

Kumaran said the company is still seeking the initial bank financing and Shore is not expected to finance any of the development within the scope of the current agreement, but may, in future agreements, provide some financing of their own work.

The current agreement appears to require a 15-day payment period from the date the contract becomes binding. No specific form of payment is mentioned. Kumaran said that the two parties recently agreed to extend that period to 90 days. The exact form of payment is still under discussion, according to Kumaran.

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The below email thread is between Georgia CEO and the following:

[email protected] (Medient’s Investor Relations Firm of Record)
[email protected] (Jeff Webster, Media Contact on Medient/Shore release)
[email protected] (Jeremy Blackburn, General Contractor, Shore Development)

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 11:09 AM, Georgia CEO wrote:

Hi - We were at the media event yesterday in Effingham and have some questions regarding the project. We would like to speak to Mr. Blackburn or Mr. Kumaran or someone who could speak about the project and the agreement between the two companies for a story we are running.

Please advise.

On May 22, 2014, at 1:58 PM Jeff Webster wrote:

I’ve reached out to Mr. Blackburn, asking him to contact you directly.

Regards,

Jeff

On May 22, 2014, at 2:58 PM, Jeremy Blackburn wrote:

To: Georgia CEO

Mr. Kumaran and many of the Medient Team members are at the Cannes Film Festival. I have spoken with Manu briefly and one of us will reach out to you tomorrow regarding your inquiry.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Blackburn

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 3:18 PM, Georgia CEO wrote:

Thanks very much Jeremy - I can also email you a few questions we had if that would be better to answer via email or know what we are going to ask when we speak.

On May 22, 2014, at 4:52 PM, Jeremy Blackburn wrote:

Email is fine. As stated Manu is in France that may be a better option for him.

On May 22, 2014, at 8:21 PM, Georgia CEO wrote:

Thanks Jeremy - We plan to run an overview of the project early next week.

I have pasted in the questions below. Some questions may be better for Jeremy and others for Manu.

- Does Medient have a physical office space or employees based in Georgia yet? If so, where and how many?

- Did Medient consider Georgia based companies for the General Contractor role? If so, can you name them?

- We have found very little information about Shore Development. Are there any projects the company has participated in or held the General Contractor role in as a company?

- Can you describe the selection process for the General Contractor? Was there an RFP sent out and a review period? Please clarify.

- There was some phrasing in the contract between the two companies that was unclear to us regarding payment. The agreement says the “form of payment” will be negotiated 15 days after the contract. We review many agreements as you can imagine but have never seen that phrasing. Does that mean payment may be made in stock or something other than cash? Please clarify.

- Can you tell us what form of payment was agreed to within 15 days of the contract?

- Will Shore Development provide financing for the construction activities?

- The contract authorizes Shore Development to buy all materials from Titan for the development. It indicates that Titan could theoretically be clearing house for all supplies purchased for the project. Example, if an electrical contractor is hired by Shore Development the contract indicates that any material or supplies used by the contractor would come to the contractor through Titan. Can you explain how this will work?

Is there any update on financing for the project?

On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 2:32 PM, Georgia CEO wrote:

Hey Jeremy - Just wanted to follow up - do you know when we can connect on the below?

On May 23, 2014, at 4:29 PM, Jeremy Blackburn wrote:

We are back in the office Tuesday, actually the team on the Medient project is onsite Tuesday in Effingham County. We can speak to the questions related to Shore on Tuesday.

The remainder of your questions that are involved with Medient will need to be addressed by Medient.

On May 27, 2014, at 11:23 AM, Georgia CEO wrote:

Hi Jeremy - Please let us know, we have a 5:00 deadline today. Please answer what you can or give me a call

On May 27, 2014 5:07 PM, Georgia CEO wrote:

Jeremy and Jeff - Anyone willing to respond?

We spoke with John (Henry) at the (Effingham) development authority today and he gave some good comments and clarifications but the questions below are out there and need clarification from you guys.

If we miss you guys this round, maybe we can do an interview or something later to expound on the topic.

On May 27, 2014, at 6:58 PM, Jeremy Blackburn wrote:

As Medient is a public company the comments need to come through Medient.
Sincerely,
Jeremy Blackburn