Today, the company he owns with Shari Redstone, Rising Star Media, has 75 screens in Russia.
Vistar backers include Valhalla Partners and Advancit Capital, the investment firm co-owned by Shari Redstone.
The current dispute centers around whether Shari Redstone, under terms of a family trust, is entitled to become chairman of Viacom and CBS succeeding Sumner Redstone after his death, without board approval.
Shari Redstone owns the other 20% of National Amusements, which in turn owns voting control of Viacom and CBS. The cinema chain operates more than 100 theaters in the U.S., Latin America, England and Russia.
Shari Redstone has been vocal in recent years over her desire to succeed her father to lead the entire family media empire and has privately expressed outrage over the way she has been treated by her father.
Shari Redstone, National Amusements' president, originally planned to use the concert space as an add-on theater to its next-door Cinema de Lux, one of National's top theaters, but the daughter of the company's billionaire owner Sumner Redstone gambled on a different model.
Now Redstone says he has offered to buy Shari's 20% stake in National Amusements, or to swap it for the theater chain, if she's willing to assume some debt on that real estate.
But today Redstone cites the need for proper corporate governance and claims Shari must "change her behavior" to win over the boards of Viacom and CBS. Several people say she has rankled Viacom's Dauman, CBS Chief Leslie Moonves and some directors by being, in their view, too assertive and meddlesome.
The Redstone family battle centers on a rift between Sumner and his 54-year-old daughter, Shari.
"If Shari desires to be bought out, I will consider this as long as the price is acceptable, " Sumner Redstone wrote in his letter.
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