WE'LL FOCUS ON THE CONTRACTS,
SO YOU CAN FOCUS ON THE CONTENT

A 17-year Disney veteran, entertainment attorney DAVID B. SCHWARTZ now brings that depth of experience to his representation of clients across the entertainment industry in contract negotiations, corporate matters, and all other forms of transactional work. David is proud to represent both corporate clients and individual creative artists, and to provide them with the legal support needed to make the best deals possible.

FILM & TELEVISION

We offer legal services related to all aspects of film and TV development, production and distribution, including serving as production counsel, negotiating distribution and acquisition agreements, talent agreements, rights acquisition agreements, and more.

THEATER

Theater is a unique world with unique legal challenges, and we can help to guide you and protect your project, whether you're a producer, creator, performer, or anyone else working in the live stage industry. From agreements with your collaborators, to acquiring underlying rights, to hiring a creative team, to serving as production counsel, to licensing the video-capture rights, we'll be there from the first draft of the treatment to opening night and beyond.

PUBLISHING

Whether it's copywriting your work, hiring an agent, entering into a publishing agreement, or even selling the film or TV rights to your book or graphic novel, we can help support you and your creation through each step in the process.

CORPORATE

We'll work with you to help select and form the ideal type of entity for yourself or your project, and handle all aspects of managing the corporate forms and formalities.

PRACTICE AREAS

ATTORNEYS

ABOUT DAVID B. SCHWARTZ

DAVID B. SCHWARTZ spent 17 years at The Walt Disney Company, where he served as Assistant General Counsel.

David led a 20-person legal team in negotiating all of Disney's agreements for the licensing of movies, TV shows and other entertainment content. He pioneered Disney’s film and television license agreements with companies like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google. He also negotiated extremely lucrative agreements with companies like Comcast, DirecTV, DISH, Starz, HBO, Showtime, Walmart, Target and numerous others. These deals included movies and TV series from beloved brands and franchises like Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, ABC, Disney Channel, Freeform, FX and Fox. Some of his particular favorite deals included negotiating the industry's first motion picture VOD agreement with Apple's iTunes, the first full major studio output agreement with Netflix, the Marvel series agreement with Netflix for Daredevil, Jessica Jones, et al, the agreement for The Simpsons to run on Disney+, and all of the major studio and platform agreements for Disney's Movies Anywhere service. Overall, he handled many billions of dollars worth of content distribution deals for Disney, and considers it a true honor to have been entrusted with managing the legal aspects of such significant, ground-breaking deals, and such iconic brands.

David also spent 3 years at MGM, where he served as the Senior Vice President of their EPIX network and streaming service, heading up Film Acquisitions, Distribution, and Strategy & Business Development for the service. This provided him the opportunity to be a part of, and learn the perspective of, a streaming service and network.

In addition to working for those two legendary film studios, David began his career in the independent film world at Gold Circle Films, where he worked on both the production and distribution sides of business and legal affairs for indie films in all stages of development, production and distribution, including one of the biggest indie film hits of all time, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

David also is a producer and writer. He is currently one of the lead producers of the new live stage musical Rutka, which recently debuted with a sold-out pair of concert presentations at Lincoln Center. He is also co-producing the upcoming feature films Post-Romantic Stress and Bennett. His published graphic novels include Meltdown (Image Comics) and Idolized (Aspen Comics), among others.

This broad set of experiences – working with both large studios and small indie producers; handling content sales and content acquisitions; working in content production, development and strategy; and working as a creator himself – makes David a uniquely innovative, creative and knowledgeable deal-maker and counselor, who understands his clients' business goals and combines his legal experience with deep knowledge of the industry and a collaborative, pragmatic approach.

David has lived about a third of his life in each of New York, Los Angeles and Miami, three of the great arts and entertainment centers in the U.S. He currently resides in the heart of the New York Theater District.