National CineMedia

At its sixth annual Upfront, held at NYC’s AMC Lincoln Square movie theater, National CineMedia announced plans to re-imagine its cinema pre-show and launch new digital channels for movie audiences. CEO Andy England offered a vision for NCM’s new pre-show, called Noovie, replacing FirstLook in 4Q17. “Noovie is a new premium video platform developed by NCM to connect your brands with movie audiences,” England explained to ad execs. “At its core, Noovie is NCM’s new pre-show that audiences will experience before the movie. But Noovie stretches beyond the theater – it’s also an integrated digital ecosystem delivering entertaining content, purposeful commerce, and interactive gaming opportunities.” Most importantly, Noovie gives movie audiences a reason to arrive early to discover what’s next, said England.

New partnerships and acquisitions for Noovie include a special early content segment, and Noovie Soundcheck, in partnership with Sony Music Entertainent’s Rumble Yard, giving fans a glimpse at bands’ unrehearsed moments. Noovie will feature commerce plays, providing purchasing data that will help advertisers better understand and reach the connected moviegoer, and incorporate move-related gaming, like trivia. And NCM has entered into an agreement to acquire box office predictions game Fantasy Movie League.

“When we began to re-imagine the pre-show, we knew that we wanted to build Noovie into an entertainment brand that develops engagement through content that is relevant to today’s movie audiences,” said NCM president Cliff Marks. “But we also knew we needed to expand Noovie beyond the four walls of the theater by creating new digital properties including a Noovie app and social media channels that will allow us to consistently drive people from the pre-show to mobile and back again – engaging movie audiences wherever they may be.”