Hackman Capital Faces $258M Default
Hackman Capital Partners has defaulted on a $257.6M loan from Deutsche Bank tied to its MBS Media Campus in Manhattan Beach and could be facing foreclosure.
The notice of default and election to sell under deed of trust was recorded with Los Angeles County on June 5. It’s the latest link in a chain of lenders' actions on Hackman’s entertainment industry-serving properties, which are feeling the impact of the slowdown in filming and television production in Southern California.
“It's been a really tough time for studio owners,” Hackman Capital Partners CEO Michael Hackman said onstage at Bisnow's Los Angeles Studio Real Estate Conference in West Hollywood’s The Lot at Formosa on Wednesday, speaking generally about the market and not about this project. “It's really been difficult. We've all been going through it.”
Hackman and Deutsche Bank each declined to comment on the default.
HCP bought the coastal complex from the Carlyle Group in 2019 in a $650M deal. Deutsche Bank wrote a $247.5M loan on the property in August 2019, according to public documents.
Los Angeles’ entertainment industry has struggled to rebound after the pandemic and the subsequent writers and actors strikes. Other owners with studio space in their portfolios have battled to find their footing, shuttering operations in select cities in the process.
A new state tax incentive program, while helpful, is just a start, some studio real estate owners say. In the first quarter of 2026, shoot days in LA County were down 3.3% compared to the same period the previous year. Annual shoot days in 2025 were lower than during the pandemic, when filming famously ground to a halt.
Like others in the business, HCP has struggled to weather these industrywide challenges. Since the start of 2026, the company has handed back a Studio City soundstage property to its lenders after a $1.1B default, listed for sale a fully leased office and retail complex in Culver City, faced foreclosure in Astoria, Queens, and defaulted on a $100M loan on a low-occupancy Culver City creative campus that once housed Sony Animation.
A lender group led by Deutsche Bank is also forcing the sale of HCP’s Television City, a 25-acre Fairfax soundstage and production property, Bloomberg reported in May.
Hackman alluded to the need to restructure debt on some properties but did not specify.
"Our fund, we have a pretty significant amount of dry powder left, and we're trying to go through where we can on restructuring certain assets, and we have available capital to go do new deals," Hackman said, but did not elaborate on the amount remaining in the fund.
Hackman framed the headlines as a slice of what’s going on at his company, not the whole pie.
“We have a couple deals that we just made mistakes on, and we’re gonna lose a lot of money on those properties, but that happens,” he said, not elaborating on which properties those were. “We've accepted it, and now we're moving on to try to maximize the value we have on the assets that matter and to make investments appropriately.”
HCP owns 19 existing studios and two development projects outside the U.S. Of the 19, 10 or 11 are debt-free, Hackman said. He also pointed out a big deal inked in Ireland and full occupancy at studios in Vancouver.
“We’ve had a lot of success,” Hackman said.
“Unfortunately, no one likes to read about a plane landing safely," he added. "They want to read about the things that don't go well.”
Looking forward, Hackman said he is optimistic about the future of the business on which his portfolio depends but also sees opportunities even if he has to move away from studio uses. After all, he noted, these studios are ultimately huge parcels of land and present residential or industrial redevelopment potential or could pivot to hosting other kinds of entertainment uses, such as large-scale live events.
“I’d love to tell the old joke about the light at the end of the tunnel, but I won’t,” Hackman said. “You know, is it light or is the freight train coming in?”
“It’s a tough time right now, but there is light at the end of the tunnel,” he added.
UPDATE, JUNE 18, 11:10 A.M. PT: This story has been updated to clarify quotes from Michael Hackman and add context about a Hackman fund.
