Fathom CEO Optimistic for Theater Industry Comeback

to the movies. I love watching them at home, but I really love the theater experience. And it's why I've really enjoyed getting to know our next guest, Ray Not. He is the chief executive officer of Fathom Events. He joins us on the phone from Denver, and we last saw him. We were talking about this on our planning call. We were talking about the last time we saw you, Ray, which was you were very nice to come to our remote set there in sort of like out by the

airport in Denver. We were there for the Commonwealth Conference, I believe, so that seems like about a million years ago. But I hope you're doing well well. I am, and thanks very much, and I hope you guys are safe and healthy as well, and UH, I look forward to the time when I can join you again in the studio or join you again at the convention center near the airport exactly. Yeah, totally. We'll tell us about your world. What it's been like personally professionally since we've had to

lockdown because of the virus. Well, it's it's it's been very interesting, obviously, and things happened so very quickly. It's hard to believe that four months ago, you know, things were just booming everywhere, including the movie business, and then it all kind of came to a halt when movie theaters started closing. So professionally, UM, here at Fathom, we launched a program called Hope and UH it's our own little acronym, which stands for the Health of our employees.

We were one of the first companies to send our employees homeworking remotely. And UH the O stands for optimism, which I'm very optimistic and I'm excited to talk to you guys a little it about the optimism in the movie environment right now. And uh P stands for persistence. We we have to be persistent, and we've been doing a lot of things during the shutdown. UM, and then he stands for excel. It means that we need to excel out of the other end of this thing and

be ready to go when theaters do open. So it's what we stay focused on professionally here. I've got the whole team working on a number of different things. But I am extremely optimistic about where the industry is going and where Fathom's going. So tell us what you have on deck and and what it sort of looks like. And you've got some specific movies that I want to talk to you about because I'm excited to see them in theaters all over again. But what does the planning

look like? How do you put together a plan where you are in the business of literally gathering people. Well, we what we've done for the last couple of months is UH is really really focused on communication. Not only communicate with our employees, but a ton of communication with our content providers and and most of our content providers have not canceled their content that they had scheduled with us. They've moved it off into the second half of the year.

And we are jam packed in the second half of the year. UH, and it it it entails communication obviously with our owners a MC, Cinemark and Regal and then a nine seven affiliate theater circuits that we distribute our content too as well. And then we've been in touch with organizations trade organizations like the National Association of Theater Owners who are representing all the theater circuits out there

that are members of them. But we've um, we've put together first and foremost a series that we're calling the Welcome Back Series, and um, it's very fluid, not knowing exactly when theater is going to open, but it's thirty days of the best of Fathom's content and uh um. And it'll be themed by day. So a Monday's might be inspiration, faith type of idols, Tuesday might be anime, Wednesday's might be classics or girls night out or arts and entertainment. Um. So we've got a whole host of

titles that were working on right now. UM. And I can certainly talk to you about a few of those if you like, well, absolutely, but I do wonder you know what's the timeframe are you can you can you put any specifics on it yet in terms of opening and how do you do it so people feel comfortable going back to a theater. Yeah, A lot of the safety and health issues are obviously the responsibility of the

theater owners, you know. As you guys know, I spent about thirty years on the theater exhibition side of the business, and coincidentally, I actually broke into this business in the risk management area. So I can assure you that from a safety and risk management standpoint that these theaters will not be open until it is completely safe to do so. And you know, there's talk about the sanitization and the checkerboards. See you know, every other seat maybe being purchased in

that type of thing for social distancing. So I'm sure that all of those things are going to be in place. Um Our content providers are also very concerned that you know, they're showing content in a safe environment as well, and and most of them, that's been the communication with them in terms of making sure that they're they're A confidence level is ups as we move forward, because this is serious, because all right, I'm just gonna have a little fun.

But I'm thinking our listeners are saying, wait a minute, you know, I step on GM when I'm in the theater, Like there's stuffs built on the floor, you know what I mean. So you're talking about, you know, sanitation levels at a much higher level than maybe we've seen before. Yeah, I'm getting a great deal of confidence from the National Association of Theater Owners, like I said, who do represent all of them, that there are programs that are being

put in place. And let's face it, these are programs that are being put in place and other retail stores and other locations that have never really been done to this extent before, So theater won't be any exception to that rule. Still with us is Ray Nut He is Ray uh he is the CEO at Fathom Events. Can't even read my own notes on the phone from den type the type. That's what's really sad. Oh my goodness,

what day is it? It's Wednesday? Right? You know what I'm curious about is, you know, we've talked a lot about the increase in streaming and everybody kind of going after content, especially kind of you know, as everybody's home and they're watching so much stuff, has it gotten more difficult for you to access titles? No? No, not really. As I as I said before, we uh we you know, almost all of our content providers have have come back to us, and they want a theatrical release of their

content before that goes downstream. So you know, the only about the only ones that have canceled on us, and there's only been a handful have been those that have had commitments to their downstream and they had to take it to v O D or DVD whatever at the points. So, uh so all, you know, all our content providers, for the most part of them very very encouraging and uh

supportive of what we're doing and where we're going. And they know theaters will open again someday soon and people do want the communal experience, like you say, and people will be back to theaters and so ray. You know, one of the interesting things about Fathom events is you know they're obviously you're showing movies, but you're also showing you know, other live events or other sort of theatrical events,

things like Broadway. And we got a chance, Caroline I did to catch up with Charlotte Saint Martin from the Broadway League last week, and one of the things that she was talking about was how difficult it's going to be for Broadway to come back. Are there other elements like Broadway and and other things that sort of feed in um that ultimately down the line will will affect you or now. Well, I think Broadway is a little bit different than movie theaters and that you're you know,

you're crowding an orchestra on a pit. Uh you know, and it's it's difficult to do social distancing there. And I suppose you know, you could do something with the seating, uh like movie theaters are going to do. Uh, And it's difficult with the talent on stages as well. Um, but uh, you know, we we do a fair amount of live content. That content will come back. The Metropolitan Opera, for example, one of our biggest uh uh content providers. Um,

we do boxing, we do UFC. We've been in heavy discussions with all of them, and when uh, when they're ready to go uh, we believe that the theaters will be ready to go uh immediately after all Right, So tell us a little bit about some of the movies that we can see later this summer, because I'm excited about a lot of these, especially some of the big screen classics. Yeah, the the the thirty day welcome back program that we have, We've we've got something for everyone there.

I mean, there's anime content, a couple of great titles, Mothering with You and Mary and the Witch's Flower. If you're an anime fan, uh, documentary you are here about nine eleven. Um, you you talked about Broadway. We've got Allegiance Bandstand, Memphis Oklahoma coming back, some really oldies and goodies and some newer ones as well. Uh. In this time, there's some inspiration in faith category that's been a huge vertical for us. And we've got titles like Insanity of God,

Kingdom and Rising. And we've got a Steve McQueen picture that we showed before which was awesome. And then you know what, statistics are also telling us that people want to see something lighthearted, some some comedy. So we've got a riff track series where um the History Science three thousand guys riff on certain movies and that'll be fun and uh. And then we have some children's programming coming as well, but that's all in our our thirty day

welcome back program excuse me. And and then we've got some other titles coming ing, uh, some of our classics, Blues Brothers, Ghosts, Fiddlers On, Fiddler on the Roof, the Shining Um Airplanes, forties. Whenever we talk about these classics, I always feel old. And my favorite movie one Flew Over the Cucos and Us with Jack Nicholson is as well. So and then we've got some things. I think the last time we talked, we broke into the TV network

UM Vertical with Friends. We were talking about that that was very successful for us. So we've got uh the best of Carol Burnett coming as well, and we think that will do very very well in the theater with some of those episodes. But uh, you know, Chasing Whiskey is another really good one. Uh it's a it's a title that looks into the Jack Daniels distillery. From a documentary perspective, is that we think that will go over

very very well as well. So again you can see the genres, they're very diverse and that's what makes it exciting here. We also have a first run which is a little different for Fathom. We usually do event cinema, which is only a night or two. But we've got a first run film that we're negotiating right now and we're just in negotiations with that and that will be announced probably in the next week or so. Interesting. Interesting, So first run in the sense that you will you'll

be the sort of you'll help distribute a brand new film. Yep, it'll be a brand new film, never seen before. It's got some big names in. It will be a limited theatrical release, probably for about a week or so, so it won't have your traditional you know, say three or four or five week run, but it will premier Uh with our theater circuits and through Fathom. Wow. Interesting, very cool stuff. Great, just twenty seconds. What brings in the most money? What kind of things is that? The things

like friends or what is it? Just quickly? Uh? Well, our top ones are arts and entertainment, vertical, our our classics, UM and uh anime. Those are our topic once and then the emerging ones would be things like, uh, we're working with publishers right now to help authors get their word out there, especially in this time where they're not you know, touring or anything, the book tours or anything.

So those are the top categories. And then we've mentioned also we have a B two B business where people come in and use our network to uh to hear their message. And we feel that in this time when theaters get back open, there's gonna be a lot of companies using US. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. Really interesting man. All right, Ray, not great to catch up with you. Thank you so much for your time and see you fathom events that at the first run thing

is interesting. We're gonna have to keep an eye on that because I would love to talk more about that.