'Atlas Shrugged: Part 2' movie funded

An area company that is apparently producing the second part of a proposed movie trilogy based on Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” novel has raised $16 million.

The Haddonfield, N.J., company raised the money in a private debt sale.

Atlas Shrugged Part 2 Productions LLC offered $25 million in debt and sold $16 million of it, according to a filing on Form D that the company made with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, FormDs.com said.

The Form D was signed by John Aglialoro, who identified himself as a member of Atlas Shrugged Part 2 Productions LLC.

Aglialoro produced “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1,” which opened last April 17, cost an estimated $6.5 million to make and grossed a little more than $4.56 million, according to IMDB.com.

The address and phone number listed on the Form D are the address and phone number of UM Holdings Ltd., a private Haddonfield company that Aglialoro chairs and co-founded. According to its website, UM Holdings owns 49 percent of Cybex International Inc. (NASDAQ:CYBI), the Medway, Mass.-based fitness equipment manufacturer. Aglialoro, who is 68, according to Yahoo! Finance’s profile of Cybex, is the company’s chairman and CEO. He also is the mayor of the tiny golf-course community of Tavistock, N.J.

Last Thursday, on what would have been Rand’s 107th birthday, a Santa Monica, Calif., company called Atlas Productions LLC issued a press release saying that filming on “Atlas Shrugged: Part 2” will begin in April and the movie is slated to be released in October “amidst what is sure to be a fever-pitched presidential election season.”

Atlas Productions said Duncan Scott, a producer, director and writer, will work on the movie. Scott’s Santa Monica, Calif., production company, Duncan Scott Productions, says on its website that it owns and distributes “We the Living,” a film based on Rand’s first novel. Scott helped Rand restore the movie, according to Atlas Productions.

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