As cinemas in the United States begin to reopen, a number of major companies have turned to the Cloud to deliver the latest films to audiences.
Cinemark, Cinépolis, Landmark Cinemas, Emagine Entertainment, and the Independent Cinema Alliance (ICA) have all partnered with start-up Cloud company MetaMedia to deliver content to their local outlets.
MetaMedia CEO Jason Brenek has previously overseen digital cinema at Disney and served as Imax’s president of home entertainment. He believes Cloud-based delivery is a more efficient alternative to the traditional hard drive and satellite delivery methods used by distributors.
The Microsoft Azure cloud-based network is designed to support all out-of-home venues, including cinemas, pop-up drive-ins or outdoor arenas. MetaMedia said it aims to connect 25,000 cinema screens across five countries to the network by 2021, having also recently launched in Australia and Mexico.
“Emerging from this challenging period, cinemas are welcoming access to a broader array of content programming options, especially as the Hollywood studios create their new film release plans,” said MetaMedia CEO Jason Brenek.
“We are both excited and appreciative to partner with such forward-thinking companies as they get back to the business of entertaining guests in their cinemas. MetaMedia will bring to these partners many of the economic, operational and programming benefits that the industry envisioned with the roll-out of digital cinema over a decade ago, with the added benefit of contactless content delivery for the post-Covid world.”
