AMC Theatres launches its own film distribution label, betting on empty screens

AMC Entertainment Holdings, the world's largest movie theater chain, announced Monday that it is starting its own theatrical distribution company, a venture called Leawood Films that will acquire theatrical rights to independently financed features and place them on screens in the United States and abroad. The move marks the first time AMC, historically a landlord for other companies' movies, will act as a distributor in its own right on an ongoing basis.

Leawood Films will not finance production or develop scripts. Instead, according to the company's announcement, it will work as a "gun for hire," taking on films that are already fully financed or completed by their filmmakers, who retain ownership of the underlying intellectual property and downstream revenue. The label is headquartered both in Los Angeles and in Leawood, Kansas, where AMC is based, and will honor a minimum 45-day theatrical window before films can move to premium video-on-demand and a 90-day window before standard streaming release, according to TheWrap.

The numbers behind the bet

AMC operates roughly 850 theaters and more than 9,500 screens worldwide, according to figures published on the company's investor relations site, making capacity, not audience appetite, the constraint the new venture is designed to address. Studios have released fewer wide pictures since the pandemic and the 2023 writers' and actors' strikes thinned out production pipelines, leaving what AMC executives describe as chronic excess screen capacity even as attendance recovers.

The financial backdrop is a company still working through heavy debt even as its core business improves. AMC's most recent quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows second-quarter 2026 revenue of $1.597 billion, up from $1.398 billion a year earlier, with adjusted EBITDA margin climbing to 20.1 percent from 13.6 percent. The same filing lists principal corporate borrowings of $3.914 billion as of June 30, alongside $819.5 million in cash and restricted cash. A distribution arm that does not require AMC to finance films is, by design, a low-capital way to generate incremental revenue without adding to that debt load.

How AMC got here

The company points directly to its own experience self-releasing concert films as the model for Leawood Films. AMC handled theatrical distribution for Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour in 2023, which grossed more than $261 million worldwide, and Beyoncé's Renaissance: A Film the same year, followed by Swift's The Official Release Party of a Showgirl in 2025. Those releases showed AMC that it could market and roll out a film nationwide without a traditional studio partner, and executives concluded the same playbook could work for smaller scripted and documentary features that struggle to land theatrical deals from major studios and specialty distributors alike.

To lend the venture credibility with filmmakers and other exhibitors, AMC recruited a roster of veteran studio executives as advisers: Toby Emmerich, the former chairman of Warner Bros. Pictures Group; Ricky Strauss, a former marketing chief at Disney and Apple; Kyle Davies, formerly head of domestic distribution at Paramount Pictures and president of the specialty distributor Bleecker Street; and entertainment attorney Craig Jacobson of Hansen Jacobson. Leawood Films will be led day to day by Davies, with distribution support from Variance Films domestically and Piece of Magic Entertainment internationally, according to the Variety and Deadline reports on the launch.

Who stands to gain, and who might not

The most immediate beneficiaries would be independent filmmakers who complete a movie with private or festival financing but cannot secure a theatrical release through a major studio or an established specialty distributor such as A24, Neon or Focus Features. For them, Leawood Films offers a potential route onto AMC's own screens plus whatever outside circuits agree to book the film, without surrendering ownership of the picture itself.

The arrangement is less obviously good news for existing independent distributors, which now face a well-capitalized new competitor for the same modestly budgeted films, backed by the marketing reach of the largest exhibition chain on earth. It also creates a structural tension: AMC is simultaneously a theater operator that must maintain relationships with major studios for their tentpole releases and a distributor competing for screen time and marketing dollars against films from those same studios. AMC has moved to defuse that concern explicitly, describing Leawood Films as additive rather than competitive with its existing studio relationships.

"Leawood Films is being created with a straightforward objective, given that substantial excess capacity exists in the movie theatre industry: to bring more movies to theatres," AMC chairman and chief executive Adam Aron said in the company's announcement. "Our Leawood Films effort is intended to complement, not compete with, the crucial work of our longstanding existing partnerships with major studios and key distribution partners."

The launch also arrives against a backdrop of uneven attendance. AMC's own disclosures earlier this year showed total attendance falling nearly 10 percent in a prior quarter, with domestic patronage down 7.5 percent and international attendance off nearly 15 percent, according to reporting by the Hollywood Reporter. That volatility underscores why AMC executives are eager to add any reliable source of new titles to a release calendar still recovering its pre-pandemic density.

What happens next

AMC has not named a slate of films or a release date, saying only that the label expects its first theatrical releases to arrive starting in 2027. The company said Leawood Films will seek booking agreements with theater circuits beyond its own, both domestically and internationally, meaning its ultimate reach will depend on whether AMC's exhibition rivals are willing to program films distributed by a competitor. Analysts and trade reporters covering the announcement have generally framed the venture as low-risk for AMC given its light capital commitment, though its success will hinge on whether Emmerich, Strauss and Davies can attract films strong enough to draw paying audiences without the marketing budgets a major studio typically provides. The company said it plans to detail its first acquisitions and release dates in the coming months.