The regional headquarters of film distributor 20th Century Fox International will be moving to Singapore from Sydney, Australia, by the end of September.
And its new head will be someone familiar to those in the local cinema industry. He is Mr Kurt Rieder, the former head of the Golden Village chain of cinemas in Singapore.
"I've spent a total of 16 years in Singapore," says Mr Rieder, 51. Born in the United States, he became a Singaporean in 2013.
He has worked in the Republic since the 1990s, for film distributors such as Warner Brothers and UIP, as well as for exhibitor Golden Village, where he was managing director from 2002 to 2003, and chief executive from 2011 to 2013.
He became Fox's executive vice-president of theatrical in the Asia-Pacific recently, after leaving his chief executive position at Mars Cinema Group, Turkey's largest cinema chain.
The relocation to Singapore will give his company quick access to a region with a growing middle class and an expanding number of cinemas.
"The studio wants to get closer to high-growth markets such as China and South Korea, and territories like Vietnam and Indonesia, which are also developing fast," he tells The Straits Times over the telephone from Sydney.
"It seems a waste to have the team managing the region to have to take an eight-hour flight to get to the region," he says.
He understands that other divisions within his studio are keen to produce or co-produce films in places such as South Korea, China and Vietnam.
He hopes to find office space in the Bras Basah area in the coming weeks. The area is picked so his team will be close to the office of the company's strategic partner Warner Brothers, which is located in Middle Road, and also because of its arts and culture heritage value.
He adds that he is looking forward to returning to Singapore, a place to which he has developed close emotional ties.
He is also eager to return to a region that just a few years ago started to outpace the United States in yearly box-office takings.
He says: "This is where the market is, this is where the excitement is. We want to be close to them."
