MARLIN PRAGER
CFO, COO,
OpenDrives, LLC
For the last year Marlin has been the CFO and COO of OpenDrives, LLC, a global provider of ultra-high-performance network-attached data storage solutions.
Marlin has over twenty-two years of experience in the media and entertainment industries. He has been directly involved in numerous equity, debt, and merger deals, totaling in excess of $10 billion, both as an investment banker and servicing in his leadership and management capacity within these companies. He was the only employee, other than the CEO, who was with Legendary Entertainment from inception in 2005 through to the Wanda acquisition in 2016, after which he left his role as CFO, to work on a number of new start-up projects.
Prior to joining Legendary, Marlin was a partner at W2 Films, whose core expertise was in the structuring of German tax structures for filmed entertainment. He also founded Digital Cinema Ventures, a startup digital projection venture to support the rollout of digital projectors in theatrical venues. Before that, he was a member of the media & entertainment team at Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin, where he became the companies first entertainment and media analyst. Marlin began his career at Price Waterhouse, where he earned his CPA.
In 2001, he founded a digital media services company called Sample Digital to work with studios on digital distribution of film dailies, which eventually was sold to Prime Focus. He also became a partner in OpenDrives in 2015, helping secure the initial investment round. He is currently managing a film fund that recently closed on a $75mm initial financing and an animation start-up with the #1 international kids animated television series. He is also a founder of Illuscio, a sister company to OpenDrives who are bringing bleeding edge innovation from film, media and entertainment to new verticals such as pharma, health and the military. Marlin is a graduate of UCLA where he graduated with the prestigious College Honors and a Cum Laude. His MBA was attained from the Anderson School at UCLA.