South African billionaire Piet Mouton rescues TV thriller after its funder pulled out

South African financier Piet Mouton, the former chief executive of investment group PSG and son of billionaire founder Jannie Mouton, put his own money into M-Net thriller Invisible after a promised funder failed to pay once filming had started, saving a series that came close to collapsing.

Mouton and fellow backer Johan Holtzhausen, the investors behind co-producer Dugga Boys Productions, agreed to fund the rest of the eight-part series when the money did not arrive, according to an account of the production published by South African television writer Thinus Ferreira on Wednesday.

"It was highly disappointing and quite a stressful time when the funder who promised funding didn't come through," Mouton said. He said he and Holtzhausen "decided to see it through to the end in terms of funding" the show. Neither the size of the shortfall nor the amount the two men invested has been disclosed. The original budget for the series was more than 100 million rand ($6 million).

Kobus van den Berg, an executive producer who specializes in production finance, said stopping halfway was not an option once cameras were rolling. "You can never do that," he said.

A house for the villain

Mouton's support went beyond money. At Holtzhausen's suggestion, he let the production use his house free of charge as the home of the series' villain, played by Scottish actor Dougray Scott. The crew moved furniture and took out the scatter cushions because the house looked too homely for the character.

Invisible is adapted from a story by Deon Meyer, South Africa's best-selling crime novelist, and was produced by Cape Town-based Scene23. It was made with Canal+'s M-Net, ITV Studios, Berkeley Media Group and Dugga Boys, and was filmed in Cape Town and around Hoedspruit in the Lowveld.

The money problems forced changes on screen. Co-writer Amy Jephta, who also directed the sixth episode, rewrote scripts to fit the budget, and a planned train chase was dropped as too expensive. The producers replaced it with a continuous scene of about 20 minutes that runs across the third and fourth episodes. Actor and executive producer Tim Theron, who plays lead character Martin Dekker, said there are ideas for further seasons.

The Mouton fortune

Piet Mouton, 49, ran PSG Group as chief executive for more than a decade before the group was broken up and its holdings handed to shareholders. He sits on the boards of Capitec Bank Holdings Ltd., the lender PSG backed from its start, private schools operator Curro Holdings Ltd. and PSG Financial Services Ltd.

His father, Jannie Mouton, founded PSG in 1995 after being fired from the stockbroking firm he co-founded, and built it into one of South Africa's most successful investment groups. Its biggest win was an early bet on Capitec, now one of the country's most valuable banks. Forbes values Jannie Mouton at about $2.2 billion.

The family has also been expanding its direct holdings. It took Curro private in a deal worth about 7.2 billion rand ($432 million), paid partly with shares in PSG Financial Services.