EGN NEWS DESK
Sony Pictures Entertainment is buying Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and can handle the theater chain’s 35 cinemas, marking the primary time in additional than half a century {that a} conventional Hollywood studio has gotten into the theater enterprise.
The deal, introduced Wednesday, was made attainable by the Justice Department’s determination in 2020 to rescind the so-called Paramount consent decrees — film distribution guidelines courting to 1949 that compelled the most important Hollywood studios to unload their theater holdings. Those guidelines have been meant to stop studios from controlling the movie enterprise, from creation to exhibition.
In 2019, the Justice Department’s then-antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, stated adjustments within the leisure trade “made it unlikely that the remaining defendants can reinstate their cartel.” Sony’s transfer to check that regulatory shift may open the door to comparable offers by different main studios. In current years, Netflix, the main streaming firm, has purchased theaters to point out movies.
Alamo, the seventh largest theater chain in North America, operates theaters in 25 metro areas throughout the United States and has invested in distinctive programming and meals choices in an try to lure in moviegoers away from main multiplexes.
The phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed. Sony purchased Alamo from Altamont Capital Partners and Fortress Investment Group, in addition to the chain’s founder, Tim League. Mr. League stated the dine-in movie show chain was “past thrilled” concerning the deal.
It comes at a time of economic hassle for Alamo and for the movie show enterprise as an entire. Several of Alamo’s franchised areas filed for chapter and closed this month, making Sony’s transfer a possible lifeline for the struggling chain. Alamo filed for Chapter 11 chapter in 2021 earlier than a personal fairness agency stepped in.
The cinemas will nonetheless function beneath the Alamo Drafthouse model, Sony stated, although they are going to be managed by a newly shaped division at Sony led by Michael Kustermann, Alamo’s chief government officer.
“Alamo Drafthouse has all the time held the craft of filmmaking and the theatrical expertise in excessive esteem, that are elementary shared values between our corporations,” stated Tom Rothman, the chief government of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group.
The trade has grappled with a number of headwinds lately, because the pandemic precipitated a hunch in field workplace receipts — and, extra not too long ago, a dismal begin to the summer season blockbuster season — whereas Hollywood strikes chipped away on the variety of motion pictures that studios churned out.
Ticket gross sales within the United States and Canada for the yr to this point complete simply over $2.8 billion, a 26 p.c decline from the identical interval final yr, in keeping with Comscore.
