Deluxe Entertainment Services Group

Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc., often referred to as Deluxe, creates, transforms, localizes, and distributes content.

Clients include motion-picture groups, television studios, digital content providers and advertising agencies. The company has been recognized with 10 Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievement, including developments in CinemaScope pictures (as part of Fox Film Corp.) and, more recently, for a process of creating archival separations from digital image data.

Founded in 1915 by producer William Fox, Deluxe has been owned by MacAndrews & Forbes since 2006. Deluxe's headquarters are in Los Angeles and New York, with operations in 25 media markets worldwide.

History
Deluxe began as a film processing laboratory which was part of a conglomeration owned and operated by producer William Fox in the early 1900s. Fox established the De Luxe laboratory in 1915 as part of the Fox Film Corporation in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

In 1916, Fox Film Corporation opened its studio in Hollywood at Sunset and Western. The first Deluxe film laboratory on the west coast was built on the south side of the lot (Fernwood and Serrano), and in 1919 the laboratory was moved to the new Fox studios building on Manhattan's west side where it remained for over 40 years. The "business manager" (later president) of the laboratory was Alan E. Freedman who guided the company into the 1960s.

During the depression, the Fox Film Corporation encountered financial difficulties. Among the actions taken to maintain liquidity, Fox sold the laboratories to Freedman who renamed the operation Deluxe. Under Freedman's leadership, Deluxe added two more plants in Chicago and Toronto. As part of the original plan, Freedman sold Deluxe back to Fox (by this time it had merged with Twentieth Century Pictures to become 20th Century Fox) but remained as president.

Under Freedman's direction, innovations, including the processing and sound striping of Cinemascope, were developed and implemented. Many of those were patented and/or received Academy awards.

After Freedman's retirement in 1962, Deluxe continued expanding into new technological marketplaces, entering the home entertainment marketplace in 1972 and accommodating digital technologies throughout the next few decades.

With the decline of motion picture production on the east coast, Deluxe closed its New York plant in the 1960s. The Chicago and Toronto plants followed. In recent years Deluxe expanded to a high capacity manufacturing plant that was one of several film labs worldwide. The Los Angeles plant continued to operate until May, 2014, when it, like all other large film processing plants, succumbed to the motion picture industry's conversion from film to digital production.

Deluxe has been owned by MacAndrews & Forbes since 2006. The company was acquired from The Rank Organisation for $750 million, its owner since 1990.