Animation company/distributor BKN has entered the home entertainment and new media distribution market with the formation of BKN Home Entertainment Ltd in the U.K. and BKN Home Entertainment Inc in the U.S. The branch was established to give th company greater control over the distribution of its content in all emerging forms and venues.
Matthew Graham-Clare has been appointed managing director of the new unit, and Mark Saxe serves as production director, both working in London. Graham-Clare joins BKN from Universal Pictures, where he was Sector Manager of the DVD division. Prior to that, he was a sales director at Maximum Entertainment, which distributes the Disney owned Jetix TV channel’s brands for home entertainment. Saxe spent 25 years at the BBC where he rose to the rank of production director of BBC Video at BBC Worldwide.
BKN has already unveiled a list of animated feature films to be produced for distribution. These include Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Kong II – Return to the Jungle, A Christmas Carol, Robin Hood, Jungle Book, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Prince and the Pauper, The Three Musketeers, Gulliver’s Travels, Alice in Wonderland and The Nutcracker. The company will also handle DVD releases for the full BKN catalogue, including such new TV series as Legend of the Dragon, Kong’The Animated Series and Dork Hunters from Outer Space.
BKN Group CEO Allen Bohbot comments, ‘We will be producing these projects, creating the packaging, dubbing in major languages such as English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, and controlling the quality and quantity of the replication worldwide.’ He adds that BKN will distribute under its own label in the U.K. and Ireland, while securing distribution deals in all other markets that essentially ‘rent’ the distribution with BKN collecting the gross receipts.
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