Deluxe Entertainment Services Group

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Deluxe Entertainment Services Inc.[1]
TypeSubsidiary
IndustryEntertainment
Media
Founded1915; 106 years ago (1915)
FounderWilliam Fox
HeadquartersBurbank, California,
United States
Key people
Cyril Drabinsky CEO
ProductsFilm
Technology
ServicesLocalization
Digital processing
Creative services
Post-production
Number of employees
3,500
Websitebydeluxe.com

Deluxe Media Inc., formerly Deluxe Entertainment Services Inc. (or simply Deluxe) is an American media company[2] whose clients include motion picture groups,[3] television studios,[4] digital content providers,[5] and advertising agencies. The company has been recognized with ten Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievement, including developments in CinemaScope pictures (as part of 20th Century Fox) and, more recently, for a process of creating archival separations from digital image data.[6] Founded in 1915 by producer William Fox, Deluxe's headquarters are in Los Angeles and New York, with operations in 25 media markets worldwide.

History[]

Deluxe began as a film processing laboratory which was part of a conglomeration owned and operated by producer William Fox in the early 1900s. Fox established the De Luxe laboratory in 1915 as part of Fox Film Corporation in Fort Lee, New Jersey.[7]

In 1916, Fox Film Corporation opened its studio in Hollywood[8] at Sunset and Western. The first Deluxe film laboratory on the west coast was built on the south side of the lot (Fernwood and Serrano), and the laboratory was moved to the new Fox studios building on Manhattan's west side in 1919, where it remained for over 40 years. The "business manager" (later president) of the laboratory was Alan E. Freedman, who guided the company into the 1960s.[9]

During the Great Depression, Fox Film Corporation encountered financial difficulties. Among the actions taken to maintain liquidity, Fox sold the laboratories in 1932 to Freedman, who renamed the operation Deluxe.[10][11] Under Freedman's leadership, Deluxe added two more plants in Chicago and Toronto. In January 1934, Fox was granted an option to rebuy DeLuxe before December 31, 1938. 20th Century Fox (the result of the newly finished merger between Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures) exercised this option in July 1936, with Freedman remaining as president.[citation needed]

Under Freedman's direction, innovations including the processing and sound striping of CinemaScope were developed and implemented. Many of those were patented and/or received Academy awards.[12][13][14]

After Freedman's retirement in 1962, Deluxe continued expanding into new technological marketplaces, entering the home entertainment marketplace in 1972 and accommodating digital technologies throughout the next few decades.[15]

With the decline of motion picture production on the East Coast, Deluxe closed its New York plant in the 1960s, followed by its plants in Chicago and Toronto. In recent years, Deluxe expanded to a high capacity manufacturing plant that was one of several film labs worldwide. The Los Angeles plant continued to operate until May 2014, when it succumbed to the motion picture industry's conversion from film to digital production like all other large film processing plants. Soon after the closure of the Hollywood plant, it was demolished and taking with it the last remaining physical elements of the original William Fox Studios (later 20th Century Fox studios), on the location of Sunset & Western. The studios themselves were demolished in 1971, minus the Deluxe parcel which remained until its demise in 2014.

In 2012, Centro became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Deluxe Entertainment Services Group.

In 2014, Deluxe partnered with the Academy Film Archive to find a home for thousands of orphaned film elements from the shutdown of Deluxe's historic Hollywood film labs. The Deluxe Laboratories Collection at the Academy Film Archive consists of over 7,500 35mm and 16mm film elements of various motion pictures dating back to the early 1960s.[16]

On April 22, 2015, Deluxe and its longtime competitor Technicolor S.A. announced that they had entered into a binding agreement to create a new joint venture known as Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema, which will specialize in cinema mastering, distribution and management services.[17]

Having been owned by MacAndrews & Forbes since 2006, Deluxe was acquired by creditors in a debt-for-equity swap in September 2019.[18] The company was acquired by MacAndrews & Forbes from The Rank Organisation, its owner since 1990,[19] for $750 million.[20]

On October 3, 2019, Deluxe filed for bankruptcy, pending in the Southern District of New York. On October 24, 2019, the company received court approval to emerge from bankruptcy with a comprehensive restructuring plan.[21][22]

On July 1, 2020, Platinum Equity agreed to acquire Deluxe's distribution business. Former Deluxe CEO Cyril Drabinsky, who left the company in 2016 to found distributor CineVizion, will return to the company, merging CineVizion's assets into Deluxe. The purchase did not include Deluxe's creative businesses, such as Company 3 and Method Studios.[23][24]

References[]

  1. ^ "About Deluxe". bydeluxe.com. Retrieved 3 December 2020. Copyright © 2020 Deluxe Entertainment
  2. ^ "Deluxe's Company 3, EFILM and Deluxe Toronto Post Major Entries in Cannes Film Festival". SHOOTonline.com. Retrieved 2016-05-19.
  3. ^ Inc., Deluxe Entertainment Services Group. "Deluxe Signs Innovative Multimillion-Dollar Services Agreement with Sony Pictures". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2016-05-19.
  4. ^ Inc., Deluxe Entertainment Services Group. "Deluxe Launches Industry First Software-Defined TV Playout At SBS Australia". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2016-05-19.
  5. ^ Inc., Deluxe Entertainment Services Group. "Deluxe Entertainment Adds to Portfolio of Digital Services at Company's Paris and Sydney Studios". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2016-05-19.
  6. ^ "!company_name! | Company Profile from Hoover's". www.hoovers.com. Retrieved 2016-05-19.
  7. ^ http://www.thestudiotour.com/fox/chronology.shtml
  8. ^ Fox Folks Vol. I, No. 4, August, 1922.
  9. ^ Fox Folks Vol. I, No. 4, August, 1922. Also, Vol. III, No. 7, July, 1924, p. 12 and back outside cover, and Vol. III, No. 8, August, 1924, p. 8.
  10. ^ Image, Deluxe Laboratories, Inc. check 101 to Fox Film Corporation for $2,000,000.
  11. ^ The Film Daily, New York, April 3, 1932, p. 1. https://archive.org/stream/filmdailyvolume55859newy#page/799/mode/1up
  12. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-07-02.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  13. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-03-26. Retrieved 2014-07-02.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  14. ^ The Hollywood Reporter, May 6, 1980, p. 170
  15. ^ http://www.filmjournal.com/deluxe-living-color
  16. ^ "Deluxe Laboratories Collection". Academy Film Archive. 14 October 2015.
  17. ^ "Deluxe and Technicolor Launch Joint Venture in Digital Cinema". Technicolor. Retrieved 11 October 2020.
  18. ^ Deluxe Entertainment to Avoid Bankruptcy with Debt-for-Equity Swap
  19. ^ Perlman Buys Deluxe
  20. ^ "Hollywood effects firm Deluxe Entertainment looks to China for deal". Reuters. 27 January 2017.
  21. ^ "ORDER (I) APPROVING THE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT FOR AND CONFIRMING THE JOINT PREPACKAGED PLAN OF REORGANIZATION OF DELUXE ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES GROUP INC. AND ITS DEBTOR AFFILIATES PURSUANT TO CHAPTER 11 OF THE BANKRUPTCY CODE AND (II) GRANTING RELATED RELIEF". cases.primeclerk.com. Retrieved October 24, 2019.
  22. ^ "Deluxe Entertainment Gets New CEO as It Emerges From Bankruptcy". Variety. 6 November 2019. Retrieved 2020-05-10.
  23. ^ https://deadline.com/2020/07/tom-gores-platinum-equity-deluxe-entertainment-distribution-business-1202975594
  24. ^ "Framestore CEO On How Company 3 Deal Alters VFX Landscape: "This Is An Exercise In One Plus One Equals More" (Q&A) | Hollywood Reporter". hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved 3 December 2020.

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