MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Releasing International (Sony-PRI) and Arts Alliance Media (AAM), one of Europe's providers of digital film distribution services, have reached a non-exclusive long-term agreement for digital cinema deployment.

Under the agreement, Sony Pictures has committed to supply its films to certain European countries in digital format to AAM-deployed DCI-compliant digital cinema screens (if booked as a release screen), as well as to make financial contributions in order to promote digital cinema.

Sony-PRI International president of distribution Mark Zucker said, "Arts Alliance Media's plan to roll out digital cinema in Europe has been embraced by the industry, and the winners are the moviegoers across Europe who will enjoy a state-of-the-art, higher quality theatrical experience. Through this conversion process, audiences will get to see motion pictures the way filmmakers intended, with beautiful, clear images and pitch perfect sound. Digital cinema is a true revolution in motion picture exhibition."

In June 2007, AAM signed Europe's first long term digital cinema deployment agreements with Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Pictures International for the conversion of close to 7000 screens over the next few years, and most recently Paramount Pictures International also independently committed to support AAM's digital rollout in Europe.

In November 2007, the first European cinema chain, CGR Cinemas in France, signed up with AAM to convert 100 per cent of its 400 screens to digital. AAM is in active negotiations for further deployment agreements with other Hollywood studios, as well as European distributors and exhibitors and announcements are expected shortly.

AAM completed the UK Film Council digital cinema rollout of 240 screens in April known as the Digital Screen Network. The company is also participating in two digital cinema trials in Europe, one in the UK at the Odeon Surrey Quays multiplex, since February 2007, and the other in Norway, in various cinemas across the country, since April 2006. To date, AAM's in-house digital cinema lab has encoded over 200 digital cinema titles and shipped over 4000 digital prints.