Company: Image Entertainment
Title: Prexy and CEO
How he’s leading: Having already reinvented his company once, Greenwald is intent on doing it again. In 2006, he fought off a bruising takeover bid by Lionsgate and scored a major content deal with Relativity Media, the hedge fund company that backed “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.”
He also found time to beef up Image’s digital distribution arm.
“We’ve been cracking the digital space the last few years because we decided that when plastic goes away, we’re going to be there,” Greenwald says. “We don’t want to go through another (laserdisc situation).”
Indeed, during the height of the laserdisc era, Image controlled 40% of the market, licensing content from studios.
However, when DVD came along, Image suddenly found itself on its own when it came to content.
The company built up a quirky library of titles, developing a niche in comedy and music fare; whenever possible, it secures digital rights.
POV: “We’re making hundreds of thousands of dollars each quarter on things that died on plastic,” says Greenwald, a big believer in the Long Tail theory of Internet riches through niches.
“Amazon has become one of our largest customers,” he says. “I had lunch with a guy from a top studio and he said nine of his top 25 customers are digital. In three years it will be 19.”
Homevid Leader Report:
