The first time a Hollywood studio has purchased a major cinema chain in 75 years, Sony has acquired Alamo Drafthouse.
We have to hand it to Sony, the studio isn’t afraid of zigging when its rivals are zagging. In the high-stakes world of studio management, there’s something charming about that. When every other studio dived into creating major streaming platforms, Sony instead kept its powder dry and held back, a move that in the short term seems to have worked to its benefit.
If today’s report is anything to go by, the company is making another move which seems to defy conventional wisdom but could yet prove to be another adroit strategic ploy.
Sony has, per The Hollywood Reporter, decided to step back into the cinema business, having acquired Alamo Drafthouse, a well-regarded independent chain with 35 locations across the US. The news comes in the same week that Cineworld has announced that it is considering selling the entire UK arm of its business, amounting to around 100 cinemas. Meanwhile, AMC, the US’s biggest chain of cinemas, is navigating a through a tough period for movie theatres.
Does Sony’s step into cinema ownership mark the beginning of a new trend or will this once again be an outlier move for the studio? It’s a small but remarkable step and one that we’ll be watching with curiosity.
Read more: Cinema-going is becoming a pastime for the better-off – and that’s a problem
Ever since the Supreme Court issued the Paramount Decree in 1948, major Hollywood studios were barred from owning their own cinema chains. The thinking behind this move stemming from concerns that the Hollywood majors were simply too powerful. Thus, they were broken up, and the Paramount Decree existed in some form until 2020 when it was repealed.
That opened the door to Hollywood studios once again vertically integrating their businesses, bringing cinema chains into the fold, the better to control exhibition and distribution. However, the nature of the business had changed dramatically since the mid-20th century and as has been discussed plenty of late here at Film Stories, the state of the cinema industry isn’t what it used to be. Thus, major studios like Universal and Warner Bros publicly ruled out the possibility of buying up a cinema chain, and even the newer studios in the form of Amazon and Netflix only bought a handful of venues, simply to have a place to screen their movies to ensure they’d qualify for awards contention.
Does that mean that more studios might step in to take ownership of cinemas? Time of course, will tell. When we hear more on this story, we’ll let you know.
