Tim Richards left his career as a Wall Street lawyer to move to London, joining Paramount and Universal’s joint ventures in international exhibition, United Cinemas International (UCI) and Cinema International Corporation (CIC). That experience turned Richards into an exhibitor at heart. After a five-year tenure as SVP of business development at Warner Bros. in Los Angeles, Tim moved back to London to found Vue, which opened its first cinema in Livingston, Scotland, in 2000. Vue has since grown to become a multinational giant in the industry, operating cinemas in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, and Lithuania. It is currently the top exhibition circuit in the United Kingdom measured by box office revenue and attendance and the largest privately held circuit in Europe.
In recognition of his contributions to the industry, Richards was appointed a commander of the Order of the British Empire by King Charles III in December 2024. He was appointed chair of the British Film Institute by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021, following seven years as governor on the BFI board.
Boxoffice Pro spoke with Richards ahead of CinemaCon to check in on the circuit’s latest innovations, its adoption of AI technology, and its foray into theatrical distribution.
We don’t have many exhibitors who start their careers as lawyers. How did you enter this industry?
I was a New York mergers and acquisitions lawyer, and I didn’t have these long-term expectations that I’d be joining the industry. I moved to London to join one of the city’s big law firms, but the credit markets died when the recession hit in 1990. I responded to a small ad in the Financial Times for a position with an unnamed studio. I had 13 interviews with Paramount and Universal. I’m not arrogant by nature, but I was confident because I was not looking for a new job—I was bored because I had nothing to do with the law firm. By my fifth interview, I suddenly realized I desperately wanted this job, and at that point, my interviewing skills were gone. I was with UCI, and it was a classic “If you build it, they will come” moment where we were just operating and developing and opening new cinemas worldwide. At that time, we also oversaw the Metro Cinema chain, which was a leftover from the glory days of the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, of global cinema. We were looking after cinemas worldwide, from Panama to Egypt then.
How did you come to open your own circuit?
I moved to Los Angeles and joined Warner Bros. in 1994. It was a really exciting time; we were opening cinemas worldwide. However, the 1997 AOL Time Warner report labeled the cinema division a noncore asset, which is never a good sign. The writing was definitely on the wall regarding where they were going with that particular group. I started getting out of positions and selling more markets worldwide, so I knew it wasn’t a long-term prospect.
I’ve always been entrepreneurial at heart, but the dot-com crash put dark clouds on the horizon, and I had to make a tough decision. I left my corner office at the studio and moved into my garage. It was one of those moments when people who knew me knew it was what I wanted to do, but everyone else thought I had completely lost my mind. I look back on that time as my most exciting and terrifying professional period.
The early 2000s wasn’t the most stable period in this industry’s history.
No, it was an interesting one. You learn a lot when you set out on your own. When I was a senior executive at Warner Bros., doors were open everywhere worldwide, and I had a lot of friends in every major market in the world. It was a bit depressing when I left the studio and called up all of these friends to tell them what I was doing: Half of them returned my calls; half of them didn’t. That’s when you realize who your real friends are, and I’m still working with most of them today.
Vue operates across several markets. Which parts of the world are recovering better than others, and which are still lagging?
It was particularly frustrating because, as an industry, globally, we set a new box office record of $42.5 billion in 2019. Nothing was broken. You can always tweak around the edges and improve and enhance, but effectively, nothing was broken. Companies, operators, and exhibitors worldwide were innovating, investing, improving, and refurbishing. As a company, we set a new profit record, and then within a space of three weeks, we closed every cinema in eight countries. It was one of those apocalyptic moments. We all pulled together as an industry and helped each other through that horrible period.
When we came out of it, it was a couple of years of simply trying to survive. Then when the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes hit, we recognized that the two strikes weren’t just a Hollywood issue. We saw filmmakers who weren’t part of WGA or SAG-AFTRA stop production. Across Europe, filmmakers stopped for almost a year. There’s a complex matrix of film production that tends to run on a three-to-five-month rolling basis. When that matrix was thrown out of sync, film production did not suddenly start again in January of 2024 after the strikes ended. It took months to get synchronized and back up; it didn’t happen in earnest until March or April.
Different markets came out of it at various points. Germany came out very aggressively, quickly, and successfully. The German government hugely supported all companies, particularly media companies like ours. Every market had its nuances in terms of the level of support from governments to get us through the pandemic. Italy had a very slow start, and they did not support the industry. They were trying to protect a very small number of independent and art house producers and exhibitors. In the last couple of years, they realized they had to kickstart the entire business again. They put hundreds of millions of euros into film production and exhibition, principally through tax credits. As you can imagine, what happened initially was that without a filter, we had a huge number of movies—none of which people wanted to see. The government recognized that very quickly and put in a group to monitor where the money was going to ensure they were viable and potentially commercial films. Now, we’ve seen some huge, huge successes as a consequence. The Italian market is back. The U.K. market, compared to the continental European markets, has been a little slower in recovering. There are a lot of people scratching their heads trying to work out why. I’m not worried at all; I’ve seen the potential the market has and the records that have been broken in the last couple of years.
Vue doesn’t have a presence in the North American market, so I’m curious to hear your perspective on its current state of affairs.
I’ve worked in 45 markets around the world but never in the United States, even though I lived in the United States for extended periods. I’m also American, alongside Canadian and British. The United States, like the rest of the world, has gone through a very difficult time, and we’ve seen what’s happened with some of the bigger players. Unfortunately, we’ve seen Regal go through a Chapter 11 process. From the outside, what I’m seeing right now is a stronger industry. It’s amazing to see people spending money again, refurbishing their cinemas, putting in recliner seats, and making the entire experience better for their customers. I’m very bullish on the United States. The worst is over, and I look at some of the companies, particularly those like Cinemark, that have stayed the course through this period as strongly as or better than anyone. Sean Gamble and the whole team there deserve credit for what they’ve done and the company they have steered and built over the years.
Vue has been at the forefront of reseating all its locations over the last several years. What are the other elements you’re considering investing in?
We went through a very painful restructuring in 2022, and we would have been okay if it hadn’t been for the strikes. We had to have a second, smaller restructuring that we did in February of last year, and when that was done, we came out of that second restructuring with an extra £50 million that our shareholders gave us. We came out with a very strong balance sheet and close to normal leverage levels for a company after surviving four years of hell. I suddenly had this weight lifted off my shoulders, realizing it was genuinely over. We have not stopped progressing since, focusing on the journey from the parking lot to the seat. We aim to make that quick, effortless, and exciting for our customers.
We are currently rolling out all of our new sites, and we’ve got quite a few coming out. We are putting in new seats and a concessions concept where we’ve completely eliminated our concession stand—a grab-and-go area where people can pick up their popcorn and Coke. It has a very quick checkout process, which will initially be by barcode, and, eventually, it’ll be an Amazon-style exit with cameras and AI. After 10 years, we’ve introduced a brand-new seat for the very first time, which we’re calling an Ultra Lux. It’s a big recliner with a gorgeous, polished, exposed carbon table between the seats. It has an integrated wine cooler that will chill a bottle of champagne or wine for our customers. We’ve installed them in several locations—Munich, Southport, and Swindon—and we are running as hard as possible to get those out to the rest of the circuit.
We’ve purchased half a dozen new cinemas and have begun our film distribution efforts. We saw a market out there for independent, British, and European films that wasn’t being catered to. The genesis goes back to 2005 and 2006—we have production credits going back to then—but we got busy and left it on the side. It was always our goal to get back into that space.
I was completely blown away when I saw C’è ancora domani. It was a big hit in Italy, and we felt it had a wider audience outside the country, so we decided to release it in the United Kingdom. It worked exactly how we’d hoped it would do. After that, we released a couple more movies and decided to formalize those activities and create a new brand, Vue Lumière. We’ve got some marketing muscle behind it and are very fortunate to count on a real superstar in the independent distribution space, Eve Gabereau. She is building out her team, and we hope to get our first few films out in the next couple of months.
You’re not only innovating in distribution but also investing in AI to give you an edge in programming your theaters.
We’ve been using AI for nearly nine years, but we’ve only started talking about it in the last 12 months. It grew out of my frustration with this area of the business, film booking, because although we are a highly analytical organization—booking was mostly done by gut instinct with a tiny bit of analysis behind it. We interviewed quite a few different tech firms worldwide and ended up with a group out of San Francisco to help us develop an in-house solution. Around halfway through that process, we realized we were seriously on to something interesting. By the time we started rolling it out across more and more of our cinemas, we knew it would definitely be the future. We’ve been very successful with it during the last nine years, playing 50 percent more movies than our major competitors at any one time. It’s been a really big win for us.
That’s why we’ve doubled down on AI. I think that’s going to be a big part of the future for all exhibitors worldwide. It’s a lot of work, but it’s moving at lightning speed, and we want to be on top of it.
What factors need to be at play for exhibition to set new benchmarks in the second half of this decade?
Looking globally right now, exhibitors are doing the right thing. No business can ever be complacent. When you look around at what some of the different players are doing in Asia, the United States, the Middle East, and Australia, it’s really exciting. I love seeing the innovations that are coming out. I’m always blown away by some of the things people are trying, and I think that bodes well for the future of our industry. I’m very bullish on the future.
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