Lionsgate seeks to sublease part of Santa Monica HQ

Lionsgate, the movie studio behind “The Hunger Games” and “John Wick” franchises, has decided it has too much office space, The Real Deal has learned.

The company has put up about 40,000 square feet at its headquarters in Santa Monica for sublease, according to sources familiar with the matter and a LoopNet listing. Cresa’s Downtown L.A. office is marketing the office space for sublease.

Worthe Real Estate Group owns the property, located at 2600 Colorado Avenue. Neither Lionsgate nor Worthe responded to requests for comment.

Lionsgate’s decision comes just five months after the studio decided to extend its lease for its 192,000-square-foot headquarters for an additional two years, according to reports at the time.

Lionsgate is asking $5 per square foot a month in rent, according to the LoopNet listing, which is lower than the average asking rents across the city. In the second quarter, average rental rates in Santa Monica were $5.86, according to Savills.

In October 2021, Lionsgate started a phased office reopening to bring employees back a few days a week under a hybrid model. Faced with threats of future Covid-19 variants and macroeconomic worries, many companies are deliberating whether to expand or shrink their office footprint in L.A. — though the decisions have been a mixed bag.

Netflix, Yahoo! and NFL Network are all trying to sublease space across Burbank and Silicon Beach, the stretch from Century City down to Santa Monica and across to Playa Vista.

Meanwhile, Amazon signed a lease in the second quarter to take up about 208,000 square feet of space at 2450 Colorado Avenue, making the largest office lease in L.A. this year. An investment fund advised by JPMorgan owns that property.