Vue CEO Tim Richards: ‘We’re about to embark on the second golden age of cinema’

Tim Richards is optimistic. “Economically bullish” is how the founder and CEO of the Vue cinema chain puts it. Since reopening began in the UK and elsewhere, he says, demand for dinner and a movie has proved second only to the love for haircuts. Epidemiology too gives him cheer. “History shows us viruses get weaker over time,” he smiles, maskless. Earlier in the pandemic, he admits his mood was darker. For much of Britain’s winter lockdown, the future of his company preyed on his mind. “Too much time to think,” he says now.

To picture Richards, 62, in despair takes effort. His tone is measured but endlessly upbeat. In fact, he left the third lockdown with his business intact and with a significant new role. In February, he was named chair of the British Film Institute. We meet for his first major interview in the job at BFI Southbank, the organisation’s London cinema. The appointment was made by UK culture secretary Oliver Dowden; Richards in turn pays tribute to such measures as furlough and Dowden’s Culture Recovery Fund. “As the head of a large international company, I can only say we wouldn’t be here without the government.”

Born in Toronto, Richards first worked in London as a corporate lawyer. Then came Warner Bros in Los Angeles where he was vice-president of business development. He launched his chain as Spean Bridge Cinemas with Stewart Blair in 1999. Beginning with a single site in Livingston, Scotland, Vue now operates 91 cinemas in the UK and Ireland, 134 more across Europe and Taiwan. 

Throughout that expansion, Richards has been a regular joiner of the boards of film quangos. Yet for all his easy manner and status as industry pillar, he also cuts an unusually pugnacious figure. In 2019 — angered by the seeming indifference of Netflix to cinemas — he publicly threatened to withdraw Vue support for the Baftas in protest at Netflix’s Roma winning multiple prizes. The same year, a brawl at a Birmingham Vue linked in news reports to crime drama Blue Story saw him pull the film from the entire chain. The decision became a news story. Film-maker Andrew Onwubolu asked if Richards was prejudiced against a movie from a black director with a wholly black cast. (After our interview, Vue was also fined £750,000 following the 2018 death of a customer in the Midlands, crushed under a reclining chair. The chain was found to have breached safety regulations.)

While Richards has a proven business record, he makes a striking choice to head the BFI. Beyond the pandemic, diversity and streaming are still urgent issues in British film — for which the general jostle for money and relevance has rarely been harder. 

His hiring also comes amid concerns that the UK government is stacking the leaderships of public bodies with political supporters. Richards’ conversation is dotted with mentions of contact with Boris Johnson and further praise for Dowden. “I will circle back to the government,” he says — and often does.

London’s BFI Southbank

He says it would be wrong to consider him close to Downing Street. “I just think we should give credit to government.” Still, the history of BFI chairs tells a tale of changing cultural weather. Through the 1980s and ’90s, the job was typically held by grandee British film-makers (Richard Attenborough, Alan Parker, producer Jeremy Thomas). New Labour changed that, bringing in broadcaster Joan Bakewell and former BBC director-general Greg Dyke. Now Richards takes over from Josh Berger, another graduate of Warner Bros. And Richards is from an even harder-nosed world than studios — multiplexes. 

“I am a hardcore commercial entrepreneur who happens to love British and independent film,” Richards says. “I look at the BFI as I would a small company with huge untapped potential.” His zest for movies seems genuine. (He enthuses about spiky American indie Shiva Baby.) The goal he outlines — commercialising the BFI without limiting access to public-funded culture — may prove complex. It could also involve outlay. Building a new national “film centre” has defeated previous leaderships. Richards “can see us having a fresh look at that”. Such ideas will lean heavily on private donors. “We’re going to need support. I will be trying to bring my own connections along.”

Richards’ appointment also comes at a pivotal time for the BFI. New chief executive Ben Roberts took up post just weeks before lockdown last March. Much of his tenure has duly been spent on the crisis in film production caused by the pandemic. Now, though, Roberts — well-liked, also rooted in the commercial sector — is said to be keen to tackle other priorities. 

One of them is an unhappy internal culture that has often made the BFI easier to admire from a distance. Roberts and Richards may also need to address still deeper issues — a spaghetti of remits and a fuzzy sense of mission. Its relations with the commercial film world can be strained, the BFI competing with the industry with the help of public subsidies.

Richards mentions a formal industry consultation as a way of building bridges. There are vacant seats too on the BFI board of governors alongside actor Idris Elba and broadcaster Jonathan Ross. “I absolutely intend to supplement the board with major film-makers,” he says.

Director Alfonso Cuarón and the cast of ‘Roma’ at the 2019 Baftas. Tim Richards threatened to pull Vue’s support of the Baftas over Netflix’s refusal to show the film in Vue cinemas © James Veysey/Shutterstock

From among the many hats the BFI wears, he spotlights education. He becomes chair with Disney and Netflix now multiyear tenants at the soundstages of Pinewood and Shepperton, creating a need for large, skilled UK crews. That opportunity is not without caveats (British producers can now struggle to staff projects. But much of Richards’ vision for the BFI is as educator — cultural and practical — for film-makers. “Film-makers in the broadest sense,” he says. “This has economic consequence.”

Of course, the landscape for film-making everywhere has transformed since Richards founded Vue. Netflix may have raised an eyebrow at the hiring of a BFI chair who once publicly berated them. Two years after the Roma storm, however, Richards is collegiate. “We love those guys. I look at them as friends.” He says he would encourage Netflix and other streamers to think of Vue as a means to further monetise their content. “I’d love to have The Queen’s Gambit on our screens.”

Richards also wants to bring gaming under the purview of the BFI. Like many cinema operators, he has long pictured a future beyond films alone. Vue screens have already been given over to Premier League football, rock concerts and a brief experiment with Wimbledon in 3D. (The technology underdelivered. “We created a lot of nausea.”) Esports is next on the horizon. “We do not have the model yet. But we will.”

It also behoves the chair of the BFI to promote British films. During the country’s temporary reopening last autumn — despite several well-regarded British titles being released — Richards told BBC radio that cinemas had “no movies”. Now he says Vue may introduce a dedicated screen for independent British films. “Even if only 20 people come, why wouldn’t you?”

The conversation arrives at Blue Story, a British film whose withdrawal from all UK Vue cinemas made Richards the face of a painful controversy. His smile tightens. Would he handle the situation differently today? “That was a challenging time. We had 100 people with machetes fighting in our foyer.” (Five teenagers were eventually arrested amid chaotic scenes; an actual connection to Blue Story was never fully established.) His decision, Richards says, was solely to do with staff and customer safety. He affirms his commitment to diversity. “It was tough to have a label put on me.”

The irony is that Blue Story neatly fits Richards’ model of what British film should be — inexpensive, inventive, popular, profitable. While not from a production background, he has clear ideas about how to make great movies. “Incredible films don’t need big budgets,” he says. This is where Shiva Baby — shoestring cheap and resourceful, albeit American — comes in. “That’s what the BFI is good at — producing tomorrow’s Shiva Baby.”

Beyond the BFI there remains what Richards calls his “day job”. Vue has always been assertive in its growth. “M&A is our DNA,” Richards has said. Now, his focus will be a post-pandemic rebuild. Longer term, he sees major power shifts. He points to the $8.45bn purchase of MGM by Amazon as a sign that streamers are turning into studios. Soon, he reasons, these new behemoths will want their own physical space to showcase product. “Amazon aren’t nervous about bricks-and-mortar. They have Whole Foods. And Apple have their retail stores. I can definitely see Apple investing in exhibition.” His voice is upbeat once more. “I genuinely think we are about to embark on the second golden age of cinema.”