What is Carl Icahn up to now? The famed activist investor wants to raise his stake in movie production house Lionsgate Entertainment (NYSE:LGF) from 18.9% to 29.9% with a $79 million investment, which would make him by far the company’s largest shareholder.

When Icahn takes a big interest in any company, he often harbors dreams of mergers and consolidation. He's been waging proxy battles at Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) for two years with a mind to break the company in half and sell it for parts. He took Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) all the way from a $6.7 billion bid to an $8.5 billion buyout of BEA Systems. There's the occasional failure, like Icahn's aborted stranglehold on Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) and his support for Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) taking over Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO), but by and large this guy knows what he's doing, and he often acts with real purpose.

Given this history of cooking up buyout bait, I can only imagine that Icahn wants one of the big studios to gobble up Lionsgate, which is the biggest of the independents today. Lionsgate runs on some of the thinnest margins in the entertainment industry and is saddled with more debt than cash. But the company also owns a tempting catalog of movie franchises like the Saw and Hostel horror series, the Transporter action series, and Tyler Perry's avalanche of romantic dramedies.

Lionsgate is looking to buy the Miramax studio from Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) in what looks like a good stylistic match. I wonder if Icahn wouldn't turn the tables on that deal and coax a bid out of Disney. That way, Disney would end up with a larger art-house catalog, Lionsgate would have the Mouse's immense backing behind it, and Icahn would walk away with a nice return on his investment.

The Icahn camp hasn't confirmed any of this, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Disney hauling out its wallet again before too long.

Can you come up with any other reason for Icahn's increased investment? Do tell in the comments below, please.