Strategies and Insights for Growth in the Cinema Industry
The Fithian Group partners with the creative community, movie theater owners, leading research firms and innovators to bring custom, market-ready solutions to the global cinema marketplace.
The Fithian Group is led by passionate believers in the power of the movie theater experience, with over 60 years in combined experience in the theatrical market. We have deep relationships and knowledge that can help bring your idea to audiences around the world.
The Fithian Group will work with you to craft outcomes designed to fit your company’s needs, grow your bottom line, and benefit the industry as a whole.
Contact Us
Our Team
-
John Fithian
FOUNDING PARTNER
President & CEO, National Association of Theatre Owners for 23 years; Lobbyist/Partner, Patton Boggs
-
Jackie Brenneman
FOUNDING PARTNER
President, the Cinema Foundation; EVP & GC, National Association of Theatre Owners; Associate, Foley & Lardner LLP
-
Patrick Corcoran
FOUNDING PARTNER
VP and Chief Communications Officer, Director of Media and Research & California Operations Chief, Writer and Editor, National Association of Theater Owners (24 years); Theater Editor, New Times Los Angeles and L.A. Reader
Areas of Practice
Industry Insights
From on-screen entertainment to in-theater innovations, our team knows what is coming next in exhibition and we are ready to share our industry insights to help our partners grow their businesses.
Implementing Innovation
We believe that the cinema industry is poised for growth. We will partner with companies with innovative solutions that grow audiences, increase effectiveness, or lower costs .
Increasing Impact
We can amplify your company’s profile and increase credibility within Hollywood, through trade, consumer, and social media, and across the global cinematic landscape. Our reputations and trusted relationships mean that when we advocate for a company, people believe us.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
The partners in The Fithian Group have a track record of making connections and building alliances.
Beginning with the Digital Cinema Transition in 2000, theater owners were confronted with the prospect of massive technological change. As one Hollywood executive put it, “You can’t stop it and the studios aren’t going to pay for it.” In short, theater owners needed allies.
Understanding the problem was not just a domestic one, John traveled the world to unite cinema owners behind basic principles: Digital needed to be as good, or better, than film. Studios, which would benefit the most from reduced film print expenses, needed to fund the majority of the costs. Every cinema owner needed to be able to benefit from that funding.
Over the next decade, the technology improved, the studios agreed to fund the transition, and Virtual Print Fees were made available to any company in the industry that wanted it.
Simultaneously, theater owners were facing studio pressure over Release Windows and Theatrical Exclusivity. As multiple distributors made unilateral attempts to shrink the period of exclusivity to expand new home offerings, John and Patrick devised a campaign focused on the idea that we were not just advocating for theater owners’ interests, but for the health of the entire industry. As part of that campaign, they met with directors and producers to learn their concerns - financial and artistic - over fewer and shorter theatrical releases. The result was an extraordinary public letter of support from dozens of top directors and producers for the primacy of movie theaters.
But building alliances and connections was not only for times of crisis. The creation of CinemaCon was based on mutual benefit for the industry at large, where vendors to the industry could meet with their customers, distributors and filmmakers could show their work, and everyone could benefit from the worldwide media attention and consumer excitement.
Cultivating strong relationships and credibility with the Media and Wall Street was an ongoing concern. We based our advocacy on data and fair analysis, not just on pushing the soundbyte of the moment. As always, we based our relationships on understanding what others needed, and where those needs connected with cinema operators.
The ongoing need to Make Connections and Build Relationships led to the creation of a Manager of Industry Relations position, the role in which Jackie first joined us. It was not her only role, but it was of central importance. Widening the scope of people that we knew - and knew us - widened our understanding of the industry and of the needs of its many constituents. It allowed us to see new technologies and new onscreen offerings over the horizon and help prepare the industry for what was coming.
It was this interlocking web of connections and allies that was vital when the cinema industry faced its greatest crisis. In January 2020, as the first inklings of a global problem trickled out of China, Patrick wrote a pandemic planning document for theaters worldwide and updated a crisis management handbook to help theater owners prepare. The COVID-19 Pandemic shuttered the industry for months, leaving it in debt and without revenue. As cinemas struggled to re-open and local and state health officials grappled with understanding the safety of movie theaters, our friends and allies rose to our defense, with public statements of support and direct lobbying of public officials.
We led a team that worked with epidemiologists, the studios, and marketing teams to develop and market the CinemaSafe program, so that theaters could adopt a uniform base of best practices for re-opening safely and to reassure the public of the essential safety of movie theaters. The key features of this program came to be adopted by public health officials and cinemas around the world.
The future of the vast majority of movie theaters in the U.S. post-pandemic relied heavily on Jackie’s leadership and connections to add movie theaters to the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG).
We worked with the bill’s principal sponsors—Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn, and Chuck Schumer—to include additional funds for movie theaters in the program. The effort was buoyed by a public campaign of moviegoers, studio executives, and some of the world’s best-known filmmakers to reach out to Congress in support of the bill and other relief measures. The action resulted in over 355,000 letters to Congress, culminating in bipartisan support to earmark $5 billion for cinemas as part of SVOG.
Jackie became the leading expert on SVOG, advising the Small Business Administration on the rules of the program they were to implement, and guiding theater owners through the intricacies of the grant process and helping hundreds of companies shape their applications to succeed. As relief funds began to flow to theater companies the mass closures predicted at the beginning of the pandemic amounted in reality to less than 1% of screens.
The long years of building ties and cultivating allies led Jackie to push for the creation of The Cinema Foundation, a non-profit, all-industry organization designed to promote the movie theater industry and comprised of theater owners, distributors, vendors, data providers, technology companies, and others. She became its first president and we helped build the first National Cinema Day in North America by bringing together a broad range of industry stakeholders and bringing 8.2-8.5 million people to the movies on a single day in both 2022 and 2023.
The Partners in The Fithian Group believe that this kind of conscious building of connections with every stakeholder in global cinema exhibition is the way forward to future growth and profitability for our industry.
THE FITHIAN GROUP IN THE NEWS
Variety: Top NATO Executives Launch Cinema Consulting Firm the Fithian Group
By Brent Lang
Nov 15, 2023 8:00am PT
“We have spent the last couple of decades helping to guide the cinema industry through the biggest challenges it has faced,” said Fithian. “Now, having survived those challenges, we want to help our industry clients seize opportunities and grow. Digital cinema, the long fight for theatrical exclusivity, the pandemic and Hollywood going all-in on streaming — we got through all that, and now, the major Hollywood labor agreements are another signal that it is the time to build.”
“The way we work has always been about collaboration,” Brenneman said. “We extend that way of working to how we build value for our clients. In our trade association days, we knew that theater owners needed allies, whether it was other cinema owners around the world, technology companies, the creative community, or distributors, and we worked tirelessly to build those connections. They paid off in times of crisis and we believe we can leverage these partnerships to help our clients grow in times of opportunity.”
Corcoran added, “We have always believed that the cinema industry was essential and strong. Telling that story to the press, the public, and Wall Street has always been a priority for us. What the cinema industry needs is more: more movies, more innovation, more diversity and more investment. We will continue to tell that story on behalf of our clients in the industry.”
March 31, 2024
Adrian Pennington
Jackie Brenneman, founding partner of cinema industry consultancy The Fithian Group, is optimistic about the future of the business, as she will outline during the NAB Show session, “SMPTE’s Future of Cinema: How Capturing a Musical Event for Global Audiences Enhances the Immersive Experience and Breaks Traditional Barriers,” part of the new Core Education Collection: Create Series conference track.
The panel, moderated by Carolyn Giardina, senior entertainment technology & crafts editor at Variety, will also feature Laurel Canyon Live president John Ross and independent director Sam Wrench.
“It’s still a very active and viable distribution platform for content owners and a place to experience something unique for consumers,” Brenneman says. “We just need to get a lot smarter at marketing it.”
“It’s not that music is specifically the future of cinema, but that the future of cinema is increased diversity of content appealing to all audiences,” says Brenneman.
It just so happens that Taylor Swift’s Eras tour concert film is tailor-made as a case study.
“It’s about marketing and awareness. So, the big differentiator and the reason we’re having this discussion surrounding Taylor Swift, was that the marketing strategy was so effective. In a single tweet she was able to alert hundreds of millions of people to her new movie, at a time when fans either couldn’t afford tickets or found her tour sold out.
“She used cinema as a means to go direct to fans. And it was just perfect timing,” says Brenneman.
“Of course, not everyone has such a great connection with fans as Taylor Swift but there are a lot of lessons to be learned. It showed that there is a way to really tap into fan desire and to do so affordably and effectively.
Jason Guerrasio Apr 3, 2024, 6:00 AM PDT
When he announced the formation of The Fithian Group in November, many thought Fithian — along with fellow former NATO execs Jackie Brenneman and Patrick Corcoran, who are founding partners — would be doing an extension of the work they did at the organization: being advocates for the theatrical experience. However, the three have much more ambitious plans.
"The basic concept is there's a lot of things that we think we can help do to improve production, distribution, and exhibition of movies, things we could never really do at NATO," Fithian told Business Insider in an interview alongside Brenneman and Corcoran late last month. "At NATO, you're representing the entire industry, so you can't take on competitive issues. I think all three of us enjoyed our careers there, but getting the band back together and focusing on business models and competitive things that we think can really improve the business is very exciting."
Though just over four months old, The Fithian Group has found immediate interest from companies seeking assistance within the movie-theater business in everything from mergers and acquisitions to consultation.
But there are two projects in particular that Fithian, Brenneman, and Corcoran hope to be the main pillars of their company.
One is overseeing the building of a state-of-the-art production studio in Europe that can handle both virtual and traditional physical production. Fithian would not divulge where exactly the studio will be and would not name the partners involved, only saying they are European investors. But he said the plan is for the studio to rival that of UK's famed Pinewood Studio in its capabilities to take on any size of production.
"Major studios are way below the level of releases that can sustain this industry," Fithian said. "We want to get more of those mid-range and independent movies out to exhibitors and, therefore, out to audiences. Having the latest and best in virtual production technologies will help the moviemaking process be cheaper."
The studio is in the early stages of development with no projected construction start date.
The other major project is an AI-assisted, data-infused direct distribution platform that filmmakers, independent distributors, and theaters can use to get more movies screened in theaters at reduced costs. For decades, theaters — through bookers — have had an endless dance of negotiating with distributors and studios for titles to play in theaters with little more than, as Fithian put it, "a lot of spreadsheets and a lot of phone calls." This has caused the business to often rely heavily on relationships over data.
The platform The Fithian Group is overseeing, which is in the early stages of development, will update that process and provide both sides with more informed decision-making capabilities, the group believes. A theater can use specific data through the platform to show a distributor why a particular type of movie should be played in their house. A filmmaker or distributor can also use the platform to show data to a theater about why their movie should be played there.
Screen Daily: Former top NATO execs The Fithian Group on why global industry is poised for growth
BY JEREMY KAY 5 APRIL 2024
What are some of the biggest challenges facing exhibition today?
PC: Number one is there aren’t enough movies. This has been gathering steam over more than a decade for almost 20 years… This started at the height of the DVD boom when the studios went into the home and stopped putting out those mid-range movies. They didn’t have to share [revenue] with exhibition, and windows shrunk. Streaming and the pandemic exacerbated that. However the pandemic basically told everybody that that model doesn’t work and we should pivot back to exhibition. And then we had the strikes. So there’s just been this [supply] delay.
Where is the opportunity in that?
PC: There’s a huge independent distribution market out there, which is part of our thinking on direct distribution. A lot of movies aren’t reaching the audiences they should, they’re not getting into as many theatres as they should. We want to eliminate the bottlenecks and the old thinking.
JB: We are in a digital cinema era. There are no longer real or virtual print fees and yet the promise of digital cinema has yet to be realised. Theatre owners were supposed to use all this great [demographic] information they now have about their audiences. They could be programming so much more effectively and efficiently for specific audiences if we were able to get more movies into theatres. If companies out there are willing to take risks, we’ll to see a lot of innovation in the next couple of years.
Fortune favours the brave.
PC: Christopher Nolan referenced in his Oscar acceptance speech [best director, Oppenheimer] that we’re only 100 years in as an art form. There is a lot that can change going forward. I was also struck by Cord Jefferson [original screenplay winner for American Fiction] who redefined risk in his speech. He spoke about a $200m movie, which seems like a risk even though [Hollywood says] this is tried and true and people love these movies.
Spread that risk and that opportunity around. The rom-com Anyone But You grossed over $100m. Those rom-coms that gross $50m to $100m are missing from the market and it’s costing us admissions. People are hungry for rom-coms. You have to take risks to develop those films. There’s a range of movies out there of various genres and price points for exhibitors to put in their theatres at the right time of year.
After decades of gradual decline in admissions, is there a world where those numbers might start to creep up?
JF: Absolutely. And part of that is that we never got to completely take advantage of the digital cinema revolution as Jackie described, because the pandemic hit us, and then the strikes hit us. But now the opportunity to fully take advantage of those technologies is there. It’s not a lack of demand to see movies in theatres that hits admissions; it’s a lack of breadth in the content targeted specifically to the audiences that want to see them.
The Wrap: In an Uncertain Future for Theaters, Owners’ Faith in Moviegoing Remains Strong
Jeremy Fuster
April 9, 2024 @ 6:15 AM
“The strikes slowed the flow of titles coming through the production pipeline, but we’ve seen more than enough evidence and heard enough from the people we are working with in production, distribution and exhibition to know that the fundamentals of our industry are sound,” said John Fithian, former president of the National Association of Theater Owners and founding partner of the exhibition consulting firm The Fithian Group.
“There is a real hunger for non-studio, independent product,” said Patrick Corcoran, founding partner of The Fithian Group. “The major studios account for 85% of our annual box office, but if you look at the most successful overseas markets right now, you see markets that are diversified, that are not entirely dependent upon that sort of global type of title that we are mostly dependent on. They have strong local film markets that are actually driving a more profitable market than we’re seeing in the U.S.”
New York Times: Netflix’s New Film Strategy: More About the Audience, Less About Auteurs
By Nicole Sperling
April 14, 2024
“The data from the pandemic is clear that movies released only to streaming don’t get the awareness and pop of a movie that was first released theatrically,” said John Fithian, former president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners and founding partner of the Fithian Group, which advises clients on ways to support the cinema experience. “Almost all of the most-watched movies on streaming services are movies that were first released theatrically.”
The Fithian Group: “What matters is growth”
April 19, 2024 • 07:05
• Marc Mensch
Patrick Corcoran: We are developing a digital platform that will in the future connect rights holders, distributors and filmmakers directly with the cinema companies - and that will provide all sides with a variety of information in order to enable new partnerships. For example, it should be clear at a glance what the target groups of a cinema look like, what content has been in demand there in the past, and what program structure can be found there. Distributors, in turn, explain what kind of film they are dealing with, what audience they are targeting, what budgets are involved, which cinemas and which markets they want to reach with the title. All of these things should be communicated openly and transparently. Above all, however, the platform should offer the opportunity to draw attention to yourself even and especially when you may not meet the relevant criteria but still have good reason to strive for a particular partnership. This applies to all sides. The core idea is to abolish the gatekeepers and thereby reduce costs at the same time. There are currently countless dispatchers making calls to the cinemas; who are grappling with things that can be regulated in a much more efficient, data-based and democratic way. We are convinced that this will significantly increase the range of cinema films. Because it ensures that theatrical releases become significantly more profitable.
At its core, it is also about data exchange. Now we have been observing public and not so public debates about this topic for many, many years, which so far do not seem to have led to a major breakthrough...
Jackie Brenneman: You can say that mutual distrust has a certain history - and that sometimes there are reasons for it. But as Patrick already explained: We are talking about a backwards-looking model, about gatekeepers. The model has to change because the markets have fundamentally changed. I'm not just referring to the number of cinema releases. The only reason why in the past they made a science out of going into the smallest detail about which copy made how much money at which location was that it alone cost around $1,200. to provide a copy to a cinema. Money that of course had to be brought in again. The entire industry was structured around justifying these costs; about the question of where the film reels or later the “virtual” film reels go. However, virtual print fees no longer exist - and real film copies have also largely disappeared. Well, it's different when Christopher Nolan releases a film. But by and large, these costs no longer exist - but the market has not responded to this seismic shift. If we now talk about a data-based platform, then it will certainly also contain historical information. But especially those that deal with demographics, interests and target groups. There are countless – and, above all, affordable – ways to work with data sets that don't even have to come out of the cinemas. The idea is to process this data with artificial intelligence and set up a large language model that learns and grows. I believe that providing a system that feels truly democratic will eliminate many of the mutual reservations. It is not about monetizing personal data or sharing individual information about individual visitors. It's about setting up a system that helps strengthen cinemas, strengthen films - and increase audience satisfaction.
“John has the vital combination of hard-nosed strategic thinking and empathetic listening ability necessary to intelligently and productively advocate for the theatrical experience in a changing world.”
Christopher Nolan