AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron anticipates Paramount will ramp up its release slate under new ownership after the company’s sale to Skydance Media closed last week.
“We’ve had a very good relationship with Paramount across many generations of his leadership,” Aron said on a a conference call after the giant theater chain’s second quarter earnings. “I’d especially like to thank [former studio chief] Brian Robbins and his executive team. They’ve been superb partners for AMC over the course of the last many years.
“At the same time, though, we are excited by Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount, because Paramount has been cash hampered in recent years, which has caused them to greenlight fewer movies than they might have liked to. It appears to us that Skydance is cash rich, and it would be our expectation that Skydance will be releasing more movies coming out of Paramount than Paramount has been releasing in recent years.
“You’ll also recall that David Ellison is no rookie in movie business,” he said of the chairman-CEO of new Paramount. “He’s been a prime force of some of the most important movies that have come out in recent years.” He called Top Gun: Maverick, where Skydance was an investor, “the single movie that you can point to since Covid hit in 2020 that turned the movie theater industry around. … It finally reminded various studio chiefs that the future was not only in their streaming services, but also in their theatrical releases, and that sometimes the most successful movies on streaming services were those movies that had a great theatrical releases.
He also praised Paramount’s new president Jeff Shell. “We’ve had a superb relationship with Jeff Shell over the past decade. … His influence over what happens at Paramount will be profound, and we think it’s going to be very good for exhibition.”
Shari Redstone officially closed the sale of her family company to Skydance last Thursday.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source deadline.com ’
