Movie Mogul's Rogue Brand, Hard Rock Hotel Team Up

What do you do when you've raised north of $8 billion to make movies, and the well for private equity funds has dried up? You go to Vegas, of course. At least that's the path being taken by the 34-year-old founder of Relativity Media, Ryan Kavanaugh, who despite the money he has funneled into Hollywood productions remains something of a mystery to most folks in the movie world.

Kavanaugh, who dropped out of UCLA in 1996 to start a dot-com-era venture capital firm, has since 2004 been Hollywood's biggest fundraiser, joining with hedge funds and private equity funds to raise mountains of money for studios such as Sony and Universal to make films. Relativity Media currently finances roughly 75% of Universal's films under an agreement struck in early 2008. But on May 6, Kavanaugh announced a deal to ally with the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino that could jump-start a new lifestyle brand called Rogue that he has quietly launched.