Integration is key for Bafta-winning chain’s chief as he eyes deal with an online giant

LE Révolutionnaire? Hombre Con Cojones? I’m trying to think what an arthouse movie director might call a biopic of Curzon boss Philip Knatchbull. Perhaps, given the huge transformation he’s planning for his business, Internet Paradiso?

As he welcomes me with a cup of rosy at Curzon’s surprisingly low-tech office in Covent Garden, it’s easy to see who might play him. With his tall, elegant frame and laconic English gent’s delivery, he’d have to be a (younger) Bill Nighy or, with subtitles, that suave Frenchman Vincent Cassel.

I’m pondering this as he leads us past the shelves full of lever arch files and rolled-up posters to his corner office — a plain affair, but for a telly on the wall. He inherited the room from Roger Wingate, the theatre and property developer whose father developed the famous Mayfair Curzon.

Wingate remains Curzon’s chairman, and his isn’t the only dynastic story in the company; Knatchbull himself is the son of one of Britain’s most celebrated film producers of the last century. His late father John Brabourne’s credits include A Passage to India and Murder on the Orient Express. Being an oik, I’m puzzled by the differing surnames, but we soon clear it up: Brabourne was John’s honorific name because he was the Seventh Baron Brabourne; Knatchbull is the “real” family moniker.

While the Knatchbull seated in grey jeans and open-neck shirt before me is well-spoken enough, you wouldn’t spot him for an aristocrat, and certainly wouldn’t guess he was the grandson of Lord Mountbatten, murdered on his boat by the IRA along with one of Philip’s brothers.

As the son of a great movie man, the 56-year-old’s childhood memories are lit up with “being on set with the likes of Bette Davis, Sean Connery, David Lean, Franco Zeffirelli”.

Inheriting his father’s passion, he went into the film business — but left to help invest the family’s money. He immersed himself in the world of tech and media investing, backing such ventures as an internet news feed, an online music business and a French internet service provider. It gave him a broad insight, he says, into how tech- nology would overhaul the world of content from music, to football, to film. But he never lost his love of movies and, after a decade of investing, started seeking a way back in. “I wanted to combine my financial knowledge and interest in technology with my love and understanding of the film industry,” he says. The more he looked at the movie world, the more he saw it heading for the same internet-induced train wreck he had witnessed in music.

Just as the record companies failed to stave off public demand for online music, allowing Napster to step into the breach, so the movie industry was fighting what film lovers wanted — a combination of access to new movies online plus decent-quality cinemas.

The big cinema chains, however, were (and still are) making film distributors hold back online releases, Knatchbull says. Odeon, Vue and Cineworld, which command about 80% of UK cinemas, insist on a 12- or 16-week delay so they can get a clear, exclusive run at customers prepared to go to their local multiplex.

“But that just c reates pent-up demand, which is filled by piracy,” he says. “Quite often, a film will disappear from the cinema one week after its release.” He shakes his head with dis- belief. “It’s there for a week and then it’s gone, yet the distributor is still bound up for that 16 weeks.”

Seeing the absurdity of this situation and its negative impact on film-makers and the distributors who license the rights to their movies, he decided to forge a “case study”; a new business model. Why not, he thought, create an integrated business that owns the cinemas, the movie rights and the online video-on-demand platform? That way,

‘Cinemas are a means to an end. They’re the shopfront for the content we also sell elsewhere’

he figured, he could control who sees new movies when, and bypass the multiplexes if they didn’t want to play ball.

The status quo was particularly damaging to arthouse movies, which had always struggled to get a decent airing at the big cinemas. So, he bought indy film distributor Artificial Eye, which had a back catalogue of 400 movies and was an expert in buying the rights to foreign films. He then did a deal to integrate it with the Curzon cinema group, which at that stage just had the Curzon Mayfair and Curzon Soho theatres. From there, he launched web channel Curzon Home Cinema.

A decade on, with the backing of billionaire pharmaceuticals magnate Tony Tabatznik, the Chelsea fan has built the cinema chain up to 20 with about 45 screens, and is seeing rapid take-up of the at-home product both as a standalone service and through BT’s home entertainment packages.

“Now, if you go out and see one of our films at Curzon Mayfair or Curzon Aldgate, you may pay £15 or £18,” he says. “If you want to see it on the same day as its cinema release but on Curzon Home Cinema, you can pay £10, or £8.50 if you’re a member. And if you wait 28 days, you can buy it for £3 or £4. There’s something for every price point at any time.”

Do the cheaper streaming options cannibalise the cinema takings? No, says Knatchbull. “Cinemas for us are only a means to an end, not the end in themselves. They’re just the shopfront for the content we also sell elsewhere.” This, he says, was a revolution in the movie world, and the cultural change it required was enormous. Not only within the silos of Curzon’s own staff but also in the wider movie industry,

KNATCHBULL’S plan is to collaborate with, or even sell Curzon to, one of these data giants. With their algorithms behind it, Curzon could target global audiences of tens of millions. He refuses to name names but a takeover by Amazon or Netflix would make sense. Amazon already sees the benefit of Curzon-style integration. Its Studios arm bought the distribution rights to Manchester by the Sea — essentially an arthouse movie — only to put it out through cinemas and on Amazon’s streaming platform.

To help examine a sale to or partnership with one of these data behemoths, he has set up an advisory board of brands man Sir John Hegarty, crossborder expert Herbert Kloiber of Tele München and corporate financier Katherine Priestley.

Wouldn’t father-of-four Knatchbull be sorry if his business baby ends up getting sold to a Silicon Valley tech titan? “I would be, yes, but I also recognise that if we’re going to grow this business and create value for our patient shareholders, then we have to consider these choices. We’ve proved the case study works. Now it’s time to move on to the next chapter.”

Perhaps that should inspire the Knatchbull movie name: Curzon, The Sequel. @ArmitageJim