Europe's largest private cinema operator, Vue International, is launching into film distribution following a lack of supply following the Hollywood strikes.
The company last month set up a UK distribution arm with the aim of bringing British, foreign and independent films to its own and rivals' screens. Vue also announced at the Cannes Film Festival last month that it would partner with British producers Andy Paterson and Annalize Davis, as well as virtual production company Dimension Studio, in a plan to distribute the films they produce .
Because of the strikes in Hollywood, we are suffering this year with a number of films, [as] we have a supply problem,” chief executive Tim Richards told the Financial Times. As a result, we thought it was a very opportune time to start producing our own films.
He added that Vue would eventually expand its distribution business to continental Europe and was recruiting for that venture.
Going into distribution is a relatively unusual move for a cinema chain, but the new arm will allow Vue to gain greater control over films after a period of limited supply.
The industry's first joint strike in 60 years by Hollywood actors and writers last summer virtually paralyzed filming for much of 2023.
Vue, which operates 220 locations in eight countries including the UK, Ireland, Germany and Italy, earlier this year released an Italian comedy-drama There is still tomorrow in the United Kingdom in its first attempt at distributing a film.
The largest cinema chain in the world, the American AMC, is also expanding its distribution activities following the success of its concert films such as Taylor Swift: the era tour And Renaissance: a Beyoncé film.
Clearly, distributors remain in the driver's seat in terms of film supply, said David Hancock, who heads cinema research at consultancy Omdia.
But given the pressure on content supply, Vues' foray into distribution gives them some flexibility and control over what they can show in their cinemas.
Views Richards said his eight-year experience building and deploying a predictive artificial intelligence model to determine which films to show on which screens would give the distribution arm a head start in matching films with private cinemas.
We know who wants to see Asian films, Turkish films, Polish or Italian films. We know where these audiences are thanks to our extensive use of AI, he said.
The technology allows Vue to adjust scheduling on demand with more daily and intraday variation. The company claimed that it had been able to screen more films in a given week than its competitors.
Normally, you would give a movie the biggest and best screen opening weekend, Richards said. [But] the AI would say, maybe with this movie you should give it the second biggest screen and keep last week's movie on the big screen for another week because it's still doing really well.
Hancock added: Film is a fairly traditional industry. Removing the movie scheduler and implementing machine learning to schedule movies was a pretty bold move. […] Competitors haven't yet done it at scale, he said.
