Vue cinema boss: I don't see streaming as the competition

"film studios tried to "circumvent" cinemas during the pandemic but lost "hundreds of millions of dollars" as a result."

""I think the studios certainly learned that we are in one small ecosystem, we all need each other," he told the BBC's Big Boss Interview podcast."

""We are fairly open in terms of trading best practices. We want to have a message that cinemas are a great place to have a good time.""

""I had a singular focus: save the company and save all of our 10,000 employees," he says. "When you have a mission like that, failure is not really an option, because the consequences are too high.""

One of the UK's largest cinema chains does not view streaming services and home entertainment as direct competition. Film studios attempted to circumvent cinemas during the pandemic and suffered substantial financial losses. Cinemas, studios and rival chains form an interdependent ecosystem and share best practices to promote cinemas as social leisure venues. The cinema chain experienced extremes: record trading in 2019, nearly two years effectively closed during Covid, then production shutdowns from actors' and writers' strikes. Streaming subscriber growth surged while cinemas focused on survival and protecting staff. The chain has returned to pre-pandemic trading levels this year.

Read at www.bbc.com