As 2024 wound down, Tim Richards, CEO of Vue, used the final few weeks to formalize an initiative he’d been openly discussing all year; Europe’s largest privately held cinema operator is launching a film distribution company titled Vue Lumière. The new entity will be wholly owned and funded by Vue. It will focus on British independent and foreign language films with the intention of releasing 10-12 films annually, leveraging Vue’s extensive European cinema footprint to cross-market films releases across territories.

London-based Vue operates 225 movie theatres with 1966 screens in total throughout eight countries in Europe, including Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom. The company’s move into distribution was telegraphed by Richards starting in at least March of 2024. Participating in a panel at the Leisure Property Forum in London he said Vue would be looking to distribute more foreign language titles in the UK. Then, at CinemaCon in April, Richards stated during another panel conversation that 40% of the movies his circuit plays are foreign language titles, adding that 70% of the box office from the UK’s top chains – Cineworld, Odeon and Vue – is from smaller, independent and foreign language titles. This was, in advance, of what would turn out to be Vue’s successful distribution of “C’è ancora domani” (“There’s Still Tomorrow”), a comedic period drama from Italy which earned GBP £340,000 (USD $415,000) in the UK and Ireland in April of 2024.

It was their experience with “C’è ancora domani” and the recent downturn in studio film releases that caused Richards and his senior management team to think about distributing films. Speaking from his office in mid-December Richards explained, “What I saw was two things; one, the mainstream studios are slowing down on the smaller movies and two, there’s an audience out there for those films.”

Vue Lumière plans to find these films all over Europe, if not the world, working as a straight distributor with no plans to become a sales agent and, at least initially, no intention of focusing on streaming. “Our goal is to roll it out across all of our markets and do what we did with ‘C’è ancora domani’,” he said. “Our goal is to take the best of Italian films and bring them into the UK and Germany and Poland, bring the best Polish films into Germany and the UK, and just kind of cross-collateralize all of our best films in other markets. That’s kind of our starting point.”

Vue is hoping their distribution offering will be attractive to filmmakers since the company’s large market footprint will allow for a movie to be released on as many screens as possible. “We have penetration across Europe. We can open a movie we believe in,” said Richards. “Not only can we open it, but if it’s appropriate, we can even give it a red carpet premiere in one of our markets. We host the London Film Festival, the Italian Film Festival, the Polish Film Festival and the German Film Festival… festivals in Berlin, Warsaw, Rome and London. So we have the cinemas there to just give a movie a little bit of an extra push with a red carpet, Leicester Square type treatment.”

Marketing smaller, independent movies to moviegoers, especially across multiple international territories, has always been a challenge. However, Richards thinks Vue Lumière has a distinct advantage over other distributors. “When we speak to filmmakers we approach them as one of the largest exhibitors in Europe with the biggest, most successful cinema website in Europe,” he said. “There’s no one else that has that message today. We play right across Europe, not just in a small market, so we can use existing resources and contacts and marketing through our existing channels, at a low cost. We already have direct contact with all of our exhibition customers through loyalty programs in each of our markets. So we have an ability to reach out and help promote a film that others do not.”

Naturally, the company already has experience on the exhibition side of the business, and with certain Vue executives having previously worked in distribution, Richards believes the company is in a unique position to help filmmakers bring their work to cinemas. “What surprised us, and we shouldn’t have been surprised because of the demand out there, but what surprised us was really the supply of movies looking for a home. We were originally going to run distribution for the next 6-12 months internally, but I think because of the overwhelming demand that we’ve had and the interest, we’ve decided to go outside and bring a team in to run it.”

It was announced on 8 January that the Vue Lumière team will be headed up by Eve Gabereau, the founder and former CEO of Modern Films.

Richards made it very clear that Vue would not simply be distributing films to their own cinemas, but instead work closely with exhibitors throughout Europe to ensure wide distribution of the company’s film titles. “We’re doing this on behalf of all cinema operators,” he said. “We’re not just doing this for ourselves. We all need movies right now. We’re still down 25-30% this year, and we’re going to be down something close to that next year.”

While he remains optimistic about the ongoing recovery of the industry from the pandemic, and the moviegoing resurgence in 2024, Richards believes 2025 will still be just as challenging, only eventually normalizing in the fourth quarter. He proclaimed, “I think there’s still some people in the industry that think next year is going to be extraordinary. It’s not. It’s not going to be extraordinary. It’s going to be another tough year.”