In the Golden Age of Hollywood, movie theater chains and the studios that made movies were far more intertwined. Now, a new version of that relationship is upon us. According to Variety, the AMC theater chain is entering into the world of independent film. AMC Theatres is launching Leawood Films, a distribution venture with three veteran Hollywood executives. Among them are former Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group chairman Toby Emmerich, Apple and Disney’s Ricky Strauss, and Kyle Davies, formerly of Paramount Pictures. The company name comes from the name of the town of Leawood, Kansas, where AMC’s headquarters is.
According to the report, Leawood Films will “focus solely on films fully financed by their filmmakers, or already completed films, leveraging AMC’s exhibition, marketing, and distribution expertise to expand the supply of movies for a broad array of movie theater operators across the U.S. and internationally.” Leawood will only acquire films that have full funding, or that are already completed. But as many films playing at festivals have discovered lately, finding theatrical distribution is hard. This may go a long way to getting a broader range of films into theaters. The goal is to increase the number of small-and mid-budget-sized movies released theatrically.
In recent years, AMC Theatres has distributed the concert films Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour as well as Beyoncé’s Renaissance themselves. Obviously, those particular movies had a very large built-in audience. But it probably proved to AMC what they could accomplish with similar results with smaller films. AMC representatives have stressed that this won’t change their relationships with the existing studios. All of this just gives them a way to bring in a variety of films to theaters that otherwise might vanish in the shuffle. We expect more details about AMC’s Leawood Films and its plans for acquisitions in the coming months.