FilmOn CEO Alki David announced the acquisition of the CineBx Library with over 30,000 hours of content.
The CineBx Library, together with 40 other catalogues such as that of Allied Entertainment, A1 Entertainment, Four Star, and HanVideo, include over 10,000 films and 10,000 hours of historical television footage.
“Our global audience of tens of millions of users has made it clear that they want more and more quality content to be available on FilmOn,” said David.
“In addition to our ongoing licensing of content, the CineBx acquisition is the first step in our 2014 push to add entire libraries to FilmOn’s free VOD service as well as expanding other distribution channels and technologies.”
FilmOn has created a state of the art restoration and digitalization facility in Irvine, California to preserve these rare films and videos and prepare them for the public’s consumption.
The largest part of the acquisition is the Allied Entertainment Library, originally formed in 1982 before it joined with Viacom and Gill Cable to program the early cable channel Classic Movie Channel. The management has continued to acquire and preserve rare film and television content.
Highlights include: John Cassavetes’ seven lost films, rare features and shorts by Robert Altman, Stanley Kubrick and uncut versions of Orson Welles’ films. Other directors include: John Ford, Frank Capra, John Huston, Roman Polanski, Bernardo Bertolucci, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Sydney Lumet, Ingmar Bergman, and Otto Preminger.
There are 640 Westerns (22 starring John Wayne and 24 directed by Quentin Tarantino favorite William Whitney), 150 Broadway musical films, 50 Blaxploitation titles, 18 Bruce Lee related titles, and countless war films and television documentaries. There are comedies from Steve Martin, Johnny Carson, Bill Murray, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Abbot & Costello, Buster Keaton, Lucille Ball, the Marx Bros., and Mel Brooks.
Classic television is represented with shows from pioneers like Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle to the golden age of talk shows with Steve Allen and Jack Paar to TV news of Edward R. Murrow. Classic soap operas, game shows and the cartoons of Hannah Barbera will provide for massive binge viewing.
The acquisition includes one of the largest catalogues of Olympic sports documentaries ever assembled, covering thousands of world athletes facing the cameras at the moment of their triumphs between 1949-2010.
The collection has a robust section of music documentaries with rare footage of hundreds of artists including Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Frank Zappa, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. And it includes the archives of the Beatles’ first music company, founded before Apple Corp.
“We have music historians going through our vaults cataloging this great collection of original recordings from the Sixties and Seventies,” David said. “And the historic music and sports libraries are also part of FilmOn’s transformative push into live events with its new hologram business.”
