Village Roadshow Group

This profile looks at Australian-based entertainment group Village Roadshow.

It covers -

• Introduction
• Cinemas
• Film production and distribution
• Parks
• Radio
• Studies

Introduction

Village Roadshow (VR) was founded by Roc Kirby in 1954 as one of the first drive-in cinemas. It entered film distribution in the 1960s and film production in the 1970s.

It now operates an international chain of cinemas, operates in the film production and distribution sectors, is in partnership with AOL Time Warner in Australian theme parks and is a major Australian commercial broadcaster through Austereo.

The group was 33% owned by Amalgamated Holdings Ltd (AHL) - the hotels, cinemas, film-labs, ski-resorts operator - from the 1950s to 2003. As of mid 2000 the Kirby family owned another 32%. The UK ITV group, which had inherited an 18% stake through the merger of Village-shareholder Granada and Carlton, sold its interest in Village in 2004.

Village announced the sale of its 50% stake in mall advertising business Eye Shop to joint venture partner Ten Network Holdings for $14.9 million in 2004.

In 2006 it restructured its Warner Bros theme park joint venture, acquiring assets of Village-Warner Gold Coast operations (including Warner Bros Movie World, Sea World and a half ownership of Sea World Nara Hotel) for $254 million and licensing the Warner brands from Time-Warner. New Zealand gaming company and cinema operator SkyCity Entertainment Group Ltd announced that it would buy Village's New Zealand and Fijian cinema business for $41.5 million. That deal involves SkyCity gaining the remaining 50% of its joint venture with Village (including) 69 cinemas in New Zealand, and adding another 22 screens by lifting its stake in Rialto Cinemas to 50% from 25%. In Fiji it will add 10 cinemas by moving to 66.7% of Village Cinemas Fiji.

The Village Roadshow corporate site is here.

Cinemas

As of 2002 Village Roadshow and partners operated around 1,500 cinemas (there is a PDF listing as of June 2001) in 15 countries. That number has been substantially reduced. After significant losses, like its major counterparts in North America, it disposed of substantial cinema operations in Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary and France.

Village is Australia's largest cinema operator, with an interest in screens across all Australian states.

In 2002 a Village, AHL and Hoyts joint venture acquired the Australian cinema advertising group Val Morgan. In 2003 it moved to 50% ownership of the cinema joint venture with Warner Bros and AHL subsidiary Greater Union (319 screens in 29 multiplexes across Australia).

Film production and distribution

The group has restructured its production arm, now based in Los Angeles and apparently driven as a partnership with Warner Bros.

Until recently it had 34.7% of shares in Hong Kong film company Golden Harvest Entertainment. Its 50% stake in animator Yoram Gross Studios (acquired in 1996) was sold in 1999 to EM.TV.

Roadshow Distributors is a 50/50 joint venture with the Greater Union Organisation (GU) distributing theatrical movies to cinema, video, pay TV and free to air television in Australia and New Zealand.

Roadshow Entertainment is a distributor of videos and interactive software in Australia and New Zealand. The group has a small distribution presence in Singapore and Greece.

Parks

The group is Australia's largest theme park operator, with three parks on Australia’s Gold Coast in partnership with the Time Warner conglomerate: Warner Bros. Movie World, Sea World and Wet 'n' Wild Water World. (The Time Warner stake was acquired by the group in 2006 for $254 million.)

It also has a stake in Sea World Nara Resort, a 405 room hotel adjacent to Sea World.

Radio

A profile of Austereo is here.

Studies

There is no major corporate history of the group.

For the film and television production arm see Australian Television & International Mediascapes (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1996) by Stuart Cunningham & Elizabeth Jacka.