Appendix B — Corporate strategies

Based on the available data corporate strategies of Norwegian distributors can be grouped as ownership, marketing enabling, acquisition enabling and release enabling strategies.

High-resource companies pursue marketing, acquisition and/or release enabling strategies through vertical integration and long-term deals. Low-resource distributors can sometimes also reach long-term deals, but are often more dependent on less formal relationships.

While being part of a large conglomerate is crucial for access to high-resource strategies, low-resource distributors that invest in local movies also depend on having owners with long-term perspectives.

B.0.0.1 Parent company

Most Norwegian distributors have a parent company, and all companies pursuing high-resource strategies are either local subsidiaries of Hollywood studios or part of Scandinavian conglomerates.

The owners of most Norwegian distribution companies regularly investing in local movies have long-term perspectives and/or are not purely driven by economic motives. This corporate disposition reduces risk because it allows a distribution company to absorb short-term losses, and it applies equally to smaller companies like Euforia and Norsk Filmdistribusjon that are, or have been, owned by production companies and/or other interested parties, and to large companies like Nordisk Film Distribution, which is owned by the Egmont Foundation. SF Studios is owned by the wide-reaching, family-owned Bonnier corporation, which focuses mainly on publishing and other media. Bonnier’s continued involvement in the Norwegian film industry even through lean times for the movie business suggests they are not motivated solely by short-term profit.

The same cannot be said about Norwegian newspaper conglomerate Schibsted, which owned Norsk Filmdistribusjon when it operated as Sandrew Metronome. Schibsted acquired Norsk Filmdistribusjon as well as the Swedish Sandrew and Danish Metronome in 1991, and the company quickly became a major Norwegian distributor (Disen 1997, 264–65). But in 2010 Schibsted divested from all Scandinavian film and cinema assets, citing “dramatic changes” in the sector (Pahm 2010). It does not seem unreasonable to assume the instability of the industry was a factor in this decision.

After 2010, Norsk Filmdistribusjon has been actively seeking new owners twice. In 2011, the company was purchased by the then municipal cinema in Oslo. When Oslo Kino was sold to Nordisk Film Kino in 2014, Norsk Filmdistribusjon was bought by its CEO and a shifting group of interested parties, including various individuals in the film industry and for a time the production company Motlys – a move likely prompted by a desire to keep the company afloat rather than out of profit or other industry motives. In 2021, the company was purchased by a group that also owns the VOD platform Nettkino, and Kulturmeglerne, a company that offers marketing and related services to the cultural industries.

With the exception of two Norwegian titles released by Walt Disney Pictures Nordic in 2012 and 2014 respectively, there was no Hollywood involvement with local movies. Ownership of local distributors was, then, largely local or Scandinavian and largely in small constellations or in conglomerates where film and other cultural industries such as publishing remain the core businesses.

B.0.0.1.1 Acquisition-enabling strategies

At a corporate level high-resource distributors gain easier access to local titles and foreign titles through vertical integration and long-term deals. While low-resource distributors occasionally make long-term deals they rely more on relationships.

Both SF Studios and Nordisk Film Distribution are vertically integrated with production companies and distribute the local films made by “their” production companies and foreign titles from their Nordic sister companies. They also secure foreign films through output-deals with European and American studios and distributors.

There are also several examples of long or short-term cooperation between distribution and production companies without ownership interests. Most established production companies seem to have their “go-to” distributor, although these can shift over time or from movie to movie.

B.0.0.1.2 Release-enabling strategies

Through vertical integration or long-term deals, high-resource distributors use vertical integration and long-term deals to gain access to release opportunities and reduce the cost of releasing titles. Examples of high-resource strategies are SF Studios’ establishment the pioneering VOD service SF Anytime in 2002 (Høier 2009) and Nordisk Film Distribusjon’s decision to end its premium-SVOD deal with Viaplay in favour of Egmont owned TV2 (Helle 2019).

Many low-resource companies prefer to use a specialist home entertainment distributor, while the high-resource companies do this in-house. The collaboration between Arthaus and the home entertainment distributor Star Media is an example of a low-resource release-enabling strategy.

B.0.0.1.3 Marketing enabling strategies

Through vertical integration or long-term deals, Norwegian distributors gain access to and reduce the cost of marketing opportunities. In this thesis, I have chosen not to examine marketing specifically. There are, however, examples of joint marketing campaigns involving several companies in the Egmont conglomerate, such as Nordisk Film Kino, Nordisk Film Distribusjon, ticket sales portal Filmweb and cinema ads vendor Media Direct Norge (Film & Kino 2019).