By bizn_fun 
Richards spoke of the turbulence of the last five years for the film industry.
Vue went from having its best year ever in 2019, to being “effectively closed for almost two years” during the Covid-19 pandemic, to grappling with actors’ and writers’ strikes which shut down production for nearly another year.
While Richards was trying to figure out how to prevent Vue from going under, or from having to lay off any of its staff, streaming services like Netflix saw their subscriber numbers explode.
“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.”
Even as cinemas began to re-open, industry figures questioned whether the model of film release had changed for good. Films like Marvel’s Black Widow saw minimal theatrical runs as streaming platforms tried to push their original productions.
More recently, titles like K-Pop Demon Hunters and The Thursday Murder Club are playing for just a few weeks in cinemas, despite proving to be hugely popular.
But Richards is unfazed. Vue returned to pre-pandemic trading levels this year and is expecting next summer to be the company’s biggest ever.
He is emphatic that there will always be an appetite for the big screen: “During the pandemic, there was an increase with subscription services because people had no choice…But that has not continued.”
“I have never looked at what happens in the home as being competition…our biggest, most frequent customers are Netflix subscribers or Disney Plus subscribers. People who love movies love movies in all formats.”
The Hollywood strikes, too, he says, were a supply issue, not a demand one. “We’ve never had a demand issue.”
Richards clearly knows the ecosystem of films inside out. Before founding Vue (then Spean Bridge Cinemas) in 1999, he was a senior executive at Warner Brothers, operating the studio’s own cinema chain, Warner Village. Spean Bridge bought Warner Village’s 36 cinemas in 2003, and the Vue brand was born.
“The headline in the business section of the Times was: ‘Unknown Bit Player Buys Warner Brothers,'” he recalls with a laugh.