FSB Holding, the Brazilian corporate communications group, and its production company ARK Entertainment have begun raising R$50m ($8.9m) for a Funcine, the country’s tax-incentive film investment fund, the companies said on Thursday 12 November. The ARK FSB Funcine will back only films and series that ARK produces or co-produces, from script development to distribution, and is managed by Investimage Administradora de Recursos.
The aim is to cover about 30% of each production’s cost, enough for at least seven films over the fund’s life, FSB chief operating officer Diego Ruiz told the business site NeoFeed. The first eligible title is Pra Você Gostar de Mim (“For You to Like Me”), Bruno Barreto’s biopic of Carmen Miranda. What sets the structure apart from ordinary tax-incentive sponsorship is that the backers become partners in each film’s revenue, and ARK gets to take projects to platforms and cinemas with part of the budget already in hand.
Key facts
- Fund: ARK FSB Funcine, structured by ARK Entertainment and FSB Holding with Papa Conteúdo; manager Investimage
- Target: R$50m ($8.9m), roughly 30% of the cost of at least seven ARK productions
- Term: five years; money can come in until the end of 2029 and the fund closes in December 2030
- First project: Pra Você Gostar de Mim, a Carmen Miranda biopic directed by Bruno Barreto, budget about R$24m ($4.3m)
- Status: listed in CVM fund data as pre-operational, with no quotaholders and no assets yet
How the fund works
Funcines are closed-end investment funds created under Brazil’s 2001 film law. As NeoFeed sets out the rules, investors can deduct the full amount they put in from their income tax, up to 3% of the tax due for companies and 6% for individuals, and they then share in the revenue of the projects they back. The fund’s own announcement is more guarded: any tax benefit depends on current law and each investor’s position.
ARK and FSB are pitching mainly to companies, starting with banks and other financial institutions and with consumer-facing businesses such as retailers. Quotaholders will be able to choose which projects they support, and brands can buy into individual titles through separate marketing deals. FSB will itself take units, and the first money is likely to arrive before the end of 2026, according to NeoFeed.
The fund has three target slates: Brazilian productions for the home market, Brazilian productions made to travel, and international co-productions with a Brazilian audience in mind. FSB’s edge is its client list: the group says its 13 companies serve about 450 corporate clients, who are the first prospective investors.
“The name of the game is intellectual property,” Ruiz told NeoFeed. “We don’t want to be an outsourcer for the streaming channels.” (Our translation from Portuguese.) Rodrigo Guimarães, ARK’s managing director, said in the announcement that the more a project is developed and financed before it goes to market, the more room ARK has to shape co-production, distribution and licensing deals, and to keep a larger share of the rights.
What the records show
The fund is registered with Brazil’s securities regulator, the CVM, under tax number 52.715.603/0001-73. CVM data compiled by the fund tracker Mais Retorno, checked by FilmBunch on Friday, lists it as pre-operational, with no quotaholders and no net assets. The R$50m is a target, not money raised.
Once the first sale of units closes, a clock starts. Under Instrução Normativa 176, the rulebook published by Ancine, Brazil’s film agency, on 11 May, a Funcine must put at least 90% of its money into Ancine-approved projects and has 360 days to place what it has raised. Anything left over is paid into the national culture fund for the Fundo Setorial do Audiovisual, the state film fund. The same rules scrapped the old R$7m ceiling on investment in a single project and extended the period over which a fund can draw revenue from a production to 15 years, from 10.
Guimarães knows the manager’s side of the table. Before joining ARK in August, he worked at Investimage, according to ARK’s announcement of his hire, after posts at Amazon MGM Studios, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and the public funders Spcine and RioFilme.
Who is involved
FSB Holding’s companies span public relations, advertising, government relations and research, and it has moved into production through the commercials houses Santeria, in which it took a minority stake in 2025, and Aurora. It launched ARK in March 2026 as its entertainment arm, with more than 10 projects in development, including co-productions with Spain, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. Investimage, led by Thierry Peronne, specialises in Funcines.
Pra Você Gostar de Mim is produced by ARK with Giros Filmes, with Globo Filmes as co-producer and a budget of about R$24m. Lorena Comparato plays Miranda, and shooting is due to start in 2027, according to NeoFeed. Globo, the parent of Globo Filmes, has just agreed to sell advertising jointly with Disney on Globoplay and Disney+ in Brazil. ARK is also in talks with a Canadian producer on a film about Pelé’s years at the New York Cosmos, Guimarães told NeoFeed.
Our reading
The fund arrives in a strong year for Brazilian cinemas, which sold 116.8 million tickets by the end of October, already more than in all of 2025, and shortly after exhibitors’ R$12 ticket week for Brazilian films. Because the fund invests only in ARK’s own projects, it gives ARK a pool of private finance it can commit before a streamer or broadcaster does, and gives FSB’s corporate clients a stake in the slate they are asked to fund.
The open question is demand. Ancine rewrote the rules because the old Funcines attracted so little money: it counted only 14 projects financed through them between 2019 and 2024. The first close will show whether companies buy in: until they do, the 360-day clock does not start and the Carmen Miranda film has no Funcine money behind it.
Sources
- Tela Viva, ARK Entertainment e FSB Holding lançam Funcine com meta de R$ 50 milhões para conteúdo audiovisual (12 November 2026)
- NeoFeed, FSB Holding estrutura fundo para financiar filmes para cinema e streaming (12 November 2026)
- Mais Retorno, ARK FSB Funcine fund page compiled from CVM data (CNPJ 52.715.603/0001-73; pre-operational, 0 quotaholders, R$0 net assets; checked 13 November 2026)
- Ancine, Instrução Normativa n.º 176 de 7 de maio de 2026 (Funcine rules, published 11 May 2026)
- Ancine, ANCINE aprova nova regulamentação dos FUNCINES (11 May 2026)
- Tela Viva, Funcines: o que muda para investidores e setor audiovisual com a IN Ancine 176/2026 (13 May 2026)
- AdNews, ARK Entertainment contrata Rodrigo Guimarães como Head de Operação e Produção (6 August 2026)
- Meio & Mensagem, Depois de Santeria e Aurora, FSB Holding lança a Ark (March 2026)
- European Central Bank, euro reference rates, 12 November 2026 (BRL 6.2241, USD 1.1081 per euro)