Executives at Cinedigm said the firm is rebranding to Cineverse as it steers away from theater technology with an eye toward streaming as the core of its business.
The announcement was made early Monday morning in a story offered to Deadline, a publication that wrongly claimed the news was “exclusive” (it was published in tandem with a press release) and whose entertainment editor, Dade Hayes, has been known to poach stories from other outlets without properly crediting them.
“We have come a very long way from the Cinedigm of 10 years ago, which specialized in digital innovation within the cinema industry,” Chris McGurk, the CEO of the newly-minted Cineverse, said in a statement. “Today we officially turn the page to become Cineverse, a pure-play business in the exciting and dynamic streaming content and technology space. Our mission is to give audiences a level of access like never before to the vast universe of film and television entertainment through the power of our proprietary technology and the breadth of our content offerings.”
To that point, Cineverse is leveraging the vast number of titles in its content library, which it offers through its own streaming apps as well as through partnership with third parties like Vidgo. As of Monday, Cineverse was touting more than 60,000 film and TV titles as well as 28 podcasts in its portfolio; this week, Cineverse is expected to announce a new content partnership with a streaming television service, timed to coincide with the trading of stock under the company’s new name.
Cineverse says the volume of its content puts it ahead of streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max and Paramount Plus. One area where Cineverse lags behind its peers is on the stock market, where shares of the company were trading for around 29 cents. The stock price was down nearly 1 percent during trading hours Monday after the company’s announcement.
