Cinedigm Acquires GVE for $51.5 Million

by ScreenCraft Staff on October 17, 2013

Earlier today, Cinedigm Corp. announced that it is acquiring GVE, an entertainment unit of Giam Vivendi Entertainment, for $51.5 million. The deal will set Cinedigm to become the largest U.S. distributor of non-theatrical home videos.

As part of the deal, Cinedigm will be the distributor of programming for companies like Discovery, the Jim Henson Company, National Geographic, NFL, WWE and others. In addition, the deal will majorly increase the company's annual cash flow.

"It's a giant transformative deal for us," McGurk said to The Hollywood Reporter. "Now we’ve got huge scale. That’s going to enable us to attract even more and better content. We already have the biggest library of video rights in the world. This can dramatically accelerate its size. I think at the end of the day because there’s still an arms race for content on digital platforms, the company that controls the most rights is going to be in the driver's seat and we're hoping that’s the position were going to be in now."

According to the company's announcement, the deal will increase Cinedigm’s annual retail sales to about $320 million annually.

In addition, according to a press release, the company said the deal will give them “the largest retail footprint of any independent studio distributor in the United States, with products sold through over 60,000 retail locations.”

Cinedigm CEO Chris McGurk told David Lieberman of Deadline that the goal is for Cinedigm to become “a huge force in the independent content distribution business."

Cinedigm's Senior Vice President of Digital Distribution, Erick Opeka, will be one of the speakers on an upcoming panel hosted by ScreenCraft. The panel, titled Digital Discourse: The Future of Media Distribution and Content Creation, will take place at 6:30 p.m. on November 6 in New York City. For more details and to purchase tickets, check out the event here.

This past summer, Cinedigm teamed up with ScreenCraft to present an exclusive preview screening of ABSENCE at the LA Film School. Check out the event page here for more information.