Broadway World recently caught up with Trafalgar Releasing’s CEO Marc Allenby, and recently hired senior VP, programming and acquisitions Kymberli Frueh about everything the company is up to, the current state of event cinema and more.

Let’s start at the beginning, where and how did Trafalgar Releasing begin?

Marc: We were PictureHouse Entertainment, and traded as that six or seven years. In February 2017, we did a management buyout of that company, and formed Trafalgar Releasing.

So, as both a team and a unit, we’ve been in the event cinema space, or content space, really, since its advent in 2005. Initially, we were looking at content for the parent company for PictureHouse Cinemas, a boutique cinema group in the UK.

And to make it scalable and attractive to content owners, we sort of fell into distribution. From that place, we really grew quite organically from small, independent art-based releases across the UK, to being a global distributor.

And were you with the Company from day one?

Marc: Yes, absolutely. I’d been with PictureHouse for about 19 years, since University, and knew that I was kind of never leaving. When event cinema was born around 2005, it was my brief to look after it for the PictureHouse group, so I’ve been across this part of the business since the beginning.

Kymberli, You helped for many years to build Fathom Events. What made you make the switch to Trafalgar Releasing?

Kymberli: Trafalgar is very much like Fathom was in its infancy stage, where it’s agile and entrepreneurial in its approach. I had 13 amazing years at Fathom helping to build our presence in the US and shape the programming with a diversified portfolio from anime to Mayweather spectacles to topical live events. Now I have a chance to do it globally with Trafalgar as they are the leader in global direct distribution.

What I love about what we’re doing here, is that we have full global distribution, and we’re the only ones that deliver content direct versus having to go through sub-distributors globally. There are a few territories where we do rely on third party distributors, but in the majority of countries worldwide we distribute direct, which gives us autonomy and control in how we shape a global release and support our content partners’ initiatives with one centralized team.

For the full interview, please visit Broadway World.