威秀有限公司

Village Roadshow is an international media and entertainment group focused on maximizing value from its core businesses. Our strategy of restructuring the cinema exhibition division, along with excellent film product, has produced a strong turnaround in 2001-02. Our investment in film production continues as it has the highest growth potential of all divisions. Other businesses performed well, in difficult trading conditions. Our core businesses are strategically and financially strong and we look to the future with confidence. Roc Kirby, a cinema operator, opens his first drive-in theater in Croydon, outside of Melbourne. Roadshow enters a distribution agreement with Warner Bros. Films and begins film production. The company acquires De Laurentis Entertainment, changing its name to Village Roadshow, and forms a multiplex partnership with Warner Bros and Greater Union. Village Roadshow begins exiting many of its international markets and extends its co-production agreement with Warner Bros. Village Roadshow was founded by Roc Kirby in 1954 as one of Australia's first drive-in theater operators, in Croydon, a suburb of Melbourne (the first Australian drive-in had opened earlier that year in another Melbourne suburb). Kirby had already operated traditional indoor cinemas, under the Kirby Theaters name, but the outdoor concept, dubbed Village, was to provide the motor for the company's growth. The original Village featured capacity for 454 cars and later offered such features as a swimming pool and a go-cart track, as well as a walk-in area for customers without cars. Kirby's company also built and operated a motel facing the theater. Quick to recognize the potential of the drive-in format, Kirby rapidly expanded his business through the late 1950s and by the beginning of the 1960s operated 27 drive-ins throughout the state of Victoria. Village Roadshow, as the company came to be called, then began to expand throughout Australia, particularly after the company began adding so-called "hard-top" (enclosed) theaters in the 1960s. While drive-ins catered especially to Australia's suburban and vast rural markets, the hard-top theaters targeted the country's growing metropolitan areas. Joining Kirby in the company's expansion were sons Robert and John, who helped out by serving popcorn and soft drinks, and especially Graham Burke, who started with the company in 1960 sweeping floors at one of its theaters. Burke rapidly became one of the pillars of the business, joining the Kirbys in Village Roadshow's expansion beyond exhibition. In 1967, the company entered the distribution side, founding Roadshow Distributors. That operation later grew into Australia's largest. Village Roadshow's distribution operation led to an agreement with Warner Bros. Films in 1971, marking the start of a long partnership between the two companies. By 1974, the company had added a television distribution component as well. Also during the 1970s, in a drive toward vertical integration, Village Roadshow turned toward film production itself. As such, the company backed a number of important Australian features of the period, including popular hits such as 1973's Alvin Purple --considered one of the seminal films of the period and the most successful Australian film of the decade--and the "Mad Max" series, which began in 1979. By the 1980s, the company had built its own production studio in Queensland, which was one of the most modern facilities of its kind at the time. The advent of video, however, spelled the end of the drive-in theater. Although Village Roadshow continued to operate a number of drive-ins through the 1990s, the format itself faded quickly with the growing available of videocassettes and VCRs. Cinema attendance on the whole suffered through the decade. Village Roadshow, however, responded quickly to these new trends, adding its own video distribution and video rental operation in 1985. Village Roadshow jumped on another fast-moving band