One of the undisputed kings of Hollywood blockbusters, whose high-concept tent pole films have grossed nearly $7 billion in worldwide box office receipts, James Cameron relocated during last year’s COVID-19 quarantines to New Zealand, where he has long owned a vast and semi-remote rural spread. Not too long after, the three-time Oscar-winning Canadian filmmaker’s longtime compound in Malibu, Calif., popped up for sale with The Altman Brothers at Douglas Elliman with a $25 million asking price.
Comprised of two side-by-side estates tucked into the tranquil and guard-gated Serra Retreat in the rolling foothills above the Malibu Pier, Cameron’s compound was taken off the open market shortly after the first of the year. However, tax records now reveal the smaller of the two homes, a ten-room single-story Spanish hacienda-inspired sprawler with a detached guest cottage that together measure around 9,000 square feet with a combined six bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms, has been sold in an off-market deal for $8.2 million — not quite twice the $4.4 million paid for the place in late 2003 — to film and television producer John Linson. (There are signs and scuttlebutt the second, larger home has also been sold but tax records do not yet reflect a transfer.)
Initially a music video producer, Linson transitioned to film and television projects in the late 1990s and early 2000s. After he co-produced the anachronistic 1999 romcom “Great Expectations,” based on Charles Dicken’s 1861 novel of the same name, Linson went on to produce the acclaimed TV series “Sons of Anarchy,” Robert De Niro’s 2016 box office flop “The Comedian” and, currently, the well-regarded Kevin Costner-starring cable series “Yellowstone,” the latter of which he co-created with screenwriter Taylor Sheridan.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The multi-winged mansion’s interior spaces showcase graphically patterned terra-cotta floor tiles, chalky white stucco walls and, in some rooms, rather unconventional ceiling shapes. Natural light pours down into the formal living room through a skylight atop one of the ceiling’s deep recesses, while the ceiling makes a sinuous, wave-like swoop over the separate, wood-floored formal dining room.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Facing the swimming pool, the T-shaped great room incorporates a cozy family room with fireplace, a breakfast nook and a spacious and up-to-date country kitchen expensively outfitted with white-marble countertops, high-end designer appliances and a giant butcher block topped center island.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The study is a somewhat dull and unfussy space with a full wall of simply designed built-ins, but the state-of-the-are screening room is a sumptuous and chromatically cinematic affair sheathed in rich, lavender-hued fabric and decked out with plush sofas covered in olive-colored velvet.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Guest bedrooms are spacious if basic with high ceilings, while the drama is amped up a bit in the main bedroom where a huge raised-hearth fireplace dwarfs the French doors it stands between.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com A couple of ephemera-strewn desks float in the center of a huge, loft-like workspace under a vaulted and beamed ceiling.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Secured behind gates, the estate’s well-groomed grounds include a gated rear motor court for service vehicles, an open-air pavilion alongside the plus-sign-shaped swimming pool, and a tennis court that’s been repurposed as a parking lot that comfortably accommodates 20 or more cars.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The adventure-seeking environmentalist, who once took a solo trip to the bottom of the 6.8-mile-deep Mariana Trench, reportedly plunked down about $16 million in 2012 for 2,500 acres of farmland around New Zealand’s pristine Lake Pounui, about five miles inland from rugged coastline along Palisser Bay and a scenic if circuitous 1.5 hours by car to Wellington and its international airport. At the time of the purchase, The New York Times reported that some of the other film and finance folk with homes in the same general vicinity included Patsy Reddy, currently serving as governor-general of New Zealand, retired American hedge fund billionaire Julian H. Robertson, and “Lord of the Rings” filmmaker (and avid airplane collector) Peter Jackson and his filmmaker partner Fran Walsh.