Cinelease, a mainstay in Hollywood motion picture and television equipment rentals for nearly five decades, has been sold to a private investment firm.
The Mark Lamberton-led rental company — which is headquartered in Los Angeles but now has locations in major production hubs across the U.S. — was acquired by the Burbank-based firm Zello, run by Louis Dargenzio, who was formerly the president of Sunset Studios.
Cinelease, founded in 1977, has been owned by equipment and tool rental firm Herc Rentals for the past six years. The sale arrives as the film and TV production space has been challenged by reduced spending by major Hollywood studios as the companies pivot away from trying to directly compete with Netflix in streaming.
That, in turn, has led to rising rates of unoccupied stages amid cutbacks to the number of features produced and episodes ordered on television series. The soundstage and services space saw a boom several years ago as Wall Street firms saw potential in those production facilities at time when office space leasing was a challenged market.
Cinelease also operates more than a dozen campuses with studio soundstages in New Mexico, Texas, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina and more locations. C-suite leaders Lamberton, Chris Rogers and Gannon Murphy will keep running Cinelease as a standalone unit within Zello.
“Cinelease is built on trust — and a team that studios, crews, and producers have relied on for decades,” stated Dargenzio, CEO of Zello, a startup firm that was founded at the beginning of 2025. “This acquisition is about honoring that legacy while leaning into the future. We believe in this team, we believe in this brand, and we believe in the entertainment industry. We’re excited to drive innovation and growth for our studio and production partners.”
Lamberton added, “Zello brings deep respect for our foundation and the operational scale to help us go even further for the entertainment community. Together, we’ll keep raising the bar for production support across North America.”
Dargenzio, a production services veteran who also led Zio Studio Services for more than a decade, launched Zello and made headlines earlier this year when starting an effort to provide free storage and land use for temporary housing after the Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires.
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