Wild Bunch (company)
Wild Bunch AG is a pan-European film distribution and international sales company, originally created in 1979 as Senator Film Verleih GmbH, which later became Senator Entertainment AG. The name Wild Bunch comes from the French company Wild Bunch S.A., created in 2002, which became a subsidiary of Senator Entertainment in February 2015. Senator Entertainment AG renamed itself Wild Bunch AG in July 2015. Wild Bunch has distributed and sold films such as "Land of the Dead" (2005), "Southland Tales" (2006), "Cassandra's Dream" (2007), "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" (2008), "Che" (2008), "Whatever Works" (2009), "The King's  Speech" (2010), "The Artist" (2011), "Titane" and "Where Is Anne Frank" (2021). Wild Bunch is also the international seller of Studio Ghibli's works and since September 2020, have taken over work from Disney to become Ghibli's theatrical, home media and television distributor in France. History. Originally a division of StudioCanal, Wild Bunch S.A. was established as an independent company in 2002 by former employees of StudioCanal. In 2011, Wild Bunch took a majority stake (by means of an equity purchase made through a cash injection) of the Spanish indie distributor Vértigo Films. In July 2014, the German film  distributor Senator Entertainment and Wild Bunch announced their intention to join forces to launch an independent film distribution and production group. In February 2015, Senator Entertainment and Wild Bunch completed their merger. Senator Entertainment AG subsequently renamed themselves to Wild Bunch AG and will use Senator as a brand. In May 2015, Wild Bunch formed a Los Angeles-based company, Insiders, to handle international sales of independent films led by Vincent Maraval. In February 2016, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that a stake in that outfit had been sold to Bliss Media, a Chinese film production and distribution company. In May  2016, Insiders and MadRiver Pictures joined forces to form an international sales joint venture, IMR international. On 24 July 2018, Wild Bunch received approval from the Tribunal de commerce to move ahead with their restructuring plans. At the beginning of July 2019, the company reorganized all of their international sales activities into a new division, Wild Bunch International. At the beginning of June 2021, they formed the genre-oriented label Wild West with fellow French studio Capricci, and 2 weeks later, announced a 50/50 animation-oriented sales partnership with French animation distributor Gebeka Films at the 62nd Annecy International Animation  Film Festival. Activities. Wild Bunch is a film sales company and also a pan-European film distributor. France. In France, Wild Bunch is a theatrical distributor and also a video distributor through its subsidiary Wild Side. Wild Bunch also positioned itself on the digital distribution market through its VoD/SVoD subsidiary Filmo TV. Worldwide. Apart from its international sales activities, Wild Bunch is also a direct distributor in Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain. Catalogue. Wild Bunch manages more than 1700 titles.