Cineworld buys Picturehouse

Cineworlds takeover of Arthouse Cinema chain Picturehouse



Cineworld has snapped up the arthouse cinema chain Picturehouse, owner of the Ritzy cinema in south London and the Phoenix in Oxford, in a deal worth £47.3m.
The deal – which will make Picturehouse's co-founder Lyn Goleby a multimillionaire – unites two very different cinema chains, with Picturehouse's films catering for an older, more high end audience.

The UK cinema market is now dominated by three players – Odeon & UCI, Vue and Cineworld – which control 70% between them. Private equity-owned Vue bought a rival, Apollo, for £20m in May while the financier Guy Hands bought Odeon and UCI in 2004 and merged them to create Britain's biggest operator.
Picturehouse had sales of £30.3m last year and a pretax profit of £2.5m. Bowcock believes the acquisition will create value for Cineworld shareholders. "It's profitable, there is demand for it. The population is getting older and people are spending more money on leisure time."
Cineworld will be able to tap into Picturehouse's purchasing power and vice versa. "For example, Lyn [Goleby] buys alcohol cheaper than we do," said Bowcock.
brow audience while Cineworld's mass-market multiplexes tend to attract 18- to 24-year-olds interested in the latest 3D blockbusters

Star Wars VII to be directed by JJ.Abrams

Star Wars VII Finds its Director


As if re-igniting the Star Trek franchise wasn't enough, JJ Abrams has landed the biggest job in genre cinema of the moment: he’ll direct Star Wars: Episode VII for Disney and Lucasfilm.
Despite playing coy back in November when asked directly by Hollywood Life about the gig (“I am looking forward more than anyone to the next iterations of Star Wars, but I believe I will be going as a paying moviegoer!”) and telling our own Mark Dinning he couldn't possibly do it, Abrams has made a deal to sit in the captain’s chair for the film, as first reported by The Wrap's sources and now confirmed by Lucasfilm and Disney. 

Sci-fi director JJ Abrams will head up the seventh Star Wars film, Lucasfilm owner Walt Disney Co has said. Star Wars creator George Lucas said he was the "ideal choice" to direct the movie - due out in 2015 - adding "the legacy couldn't be in better hands". It will be scripted by Oscar-winning writer Michael Arndt. Abrams, who co-created Lost and directed the Star Trek reboot, said he was "more grateful to George Lucas now than I was as a kid". 

In October, Disney announced it had bought Lucasfilm for $4.05bn (£2.5bn) and was committed to three new films. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who will produce the films, said Abrams was "the perfect director to helm this". "Beyond having such great instincts as a filmmaker, he has an intuitive understanding of this franchise - he understands the essence of the Star Wars experience," she said in a statement. The original Star Wars trilogy - which consists of the original film in 1977, 1980's The Empire Strikes Back and 1983's Return of the Jedi - was always envisioned by Lucas as the central chunk of a nine-movie cycle.

Abrams, who has also directed films including Mission: Impossible III and Super 8, said in a 2009 interview with the Los Angeles Times that, "as a kid, Star Wars was much more my thing than Star Trek was".

BlockBuster and HMV go in to administration

DVD rental firm Blockbuster has become the latest UK High Street firm to go into administration after struggling against online competitors.

The firm launched an online DVD rental operation in 2002, and the company's website, blockbuster.co.uk, claims to send out more discs per customer than other online DVD rental services in the UK. The first Blockbuster store in the UK opened in south London in 1989, and the firm has sought to expand its services in recent years, including with a trade-in facility for pre-owned titles.

However, this online rental market became increasingly crowded with rival services, and now the popularity of streaming films over the internet is growing fast. Blockbuster UK has closed more than 100 outlets in the past few years. Music chain HMV and camera-seller Jessops both went into administration earlier this month.
"Firms like Blockbuster failed to face up to the enormity of the change and altered their business model on the fringes (eg selling second-hand products), rather than coming up with an innovative offering. It is shocking that the board and executive management failed to make bold choices."

HMV's administrator Deloitte is set to axe more than 900 jobs by closing 66 stores over the coming two months.

The shops identified for closure include those in Wood Green, Wandsworth and Bayswater in London, and Burton-upon-Trent, Edinburgh, Wakefield, Wigan, Falkirk, Huddersfield and Chesterfield.
HMV went into administration last month, putting more than 4,000 jobs at risk, although it continues to trade all its 220 stores. The coming closures will see 930 jobs cut.
While HMV remains in administration, its £120m of debt was bought by the restructuring company Hilco for less than £40m last month. This raised the prospect that Hilco, which acquired HMV Canada in 2011, may rescue a slimmed-down version of the UK chain.