Bloomberg reports that Starbucks is moving closer to becoming a content company, not just a coffee company. The company will start promoting films and books in the future, and may even produce feature film in the future.
"Over the past year, we viewed countless films and spoke with numerous studios in pursuit of finding the perfect film," Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz said in a statement. "Just as we have demonstrated with music, we believe Starbucks can ultimately change the rules of the game for film marketing and distribution."
Schultz already has ties to the movie industry. He sits on the board of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., and he hired Ken Lombard, former head of Earvin "Magic" Johnson's Johnson Development Corp., to run the burgeoning entertainment division of Starbucks. The company doesn't break out results for the entertainment business.
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Gould also said Starbucks has been meeting with Hollywood studios about possible film projects and plans to begin selling books later this year.
Starbucks has also been expanding its music business. In 1999 it bought Hear Music, a chain of music stores with locations in Seattle and Austin, Texas.
The company has since created larger Hear Music stores attached to Starbucks's coffee shops where customers can choose from more than 1 million song titles and burn their own CDs while sipping lattes. Starbucks won't have more than 20 CD and DVD titles at any one time in its stores so customers don't get overwhelmed, Gould said.
We just don't know about Starbucks producing movies: selling CDs and DVDs, Ok, that makes sense. But actually trying to produce films? That is really getting quite far away from the core business plan.
