Deluxe

DeLuxe Entertainment Services Group Inc. is in the business of traditional and digital cinema post production services. Clients include major motion-picture groups such as 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios. DeLuxe began as a film processing laboratory which was part of a conglomeration owned and operated by producer William Fox in the early 1900s. The laboratory was part of the Fox Film Corporation which Fox created in Fort Lee, New Jersey in 1915. In 1919 the laboratory was moved to the new Fox studios building on Manhattan’s west side where it remained for over 40 years. The “business manager” (later president) was Alan E. Freedman who guided the company into the 1960s. In 1916, Fox Film Corporation opened its studio in Hollywood at Sunset and Western. The first DeLuxe film laboratory on the west coast was built on the south side of the lot (Fernwood and Serrano). During the depression, the Fox Film Corporation encountered financial difficulties. Among the actions taken to maintain liquidity, Fox sold the laboratories to Freedman who renamed the operation DeLuxe. Under Freedman’s leadership, DeLuxe added two more plants in Chicago and Toronto. As part of the original plan, Freedman sold DeLuxe back to Fox (by this time it had merged with Twentieth Century Pictures to become 20th Century Fox) but remained as president. Under Freedman’s direction, innovations, including the processing and sound striping of Cinemascope, were developed and implemented. Many of those were patented and/or received Academy awards. With the decline of motion picture production on the east coast, DeLuxe closed its New York plant in the 1960s. The Chicago and Toronto plants followed. In recent years DeLuxe expanded to a high capacity manufacturing plant that was one of several film labs worldwide. The Los Angeles plant continued to operate until May, 2014, when it, like all other large film processing plants, succumbed to the motion picture industry’s conversion from film to digital production. The company now principally operates in two business segments: Content Creation and Film Distribution. Creative Services assists studios and production companies with all aspects of motion-picture post-production, including on-set services, dailies, digital intermediate, release printing, compression, encoding, authoring, subtitling. This segment also distributes motion-picture-related marketing materials and provides digital-distribution and asset-management products and services. Deluxe has been owned by MacAndrews & Forbes since 2006.