FilmOn has completed its acquisition of the world’s largest privately owned film library. The library, including 30,000 hours of content, was part of a $25 million investment into several major film libraries and a new digitization facility. The library includes rare classics by Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Otto Preminger and John Huston along with never before seen footage of John F. Kennedy, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and The Beatles. The acquisition was announced by FilmOn CEO Alki David.

The acquisition includes the CineBx Library along with 40 other cataloges including Allied Entertainment, A1 Entertainment, Four Star, and HanVideo. The collections comprise a total of 10,000 films and 10,000 hours of historical television footage. This acquisition is in addition to the thousands of content FilmOn already has housed for its viewers.

“Our global audience of tens of millions of users has made it clear that they want more and more quality content to be available on FilmOn,” said David. “In addition to our ongoing licensing of content, the CineBx acquisition is the first step in our 2014 push to add entire libraries to FilmOn’s free VOD service as well as expanding other distribution channels and technologies.”

To preserve the films and prepare them for public use, the FilmOn has created a state-of-the-art restoration and digitalization facility in Irvine, CA. Some of the films fans can expect to see on FilmOn include John Cassavetes’ seven lost films, shorts and rare features by Robert Altman, uncut versions of Orson Welles’ films, and films from the directors mentioned above. Also in the acquisition includes 640 westerns, 150 Broadway musical films, 50 Blaxploitation films, 18 Bruce Lee related titles and many war films, television documentaries comedies, cartoons, music documentaries, one of the largest catalogues of Olympics sports and more.

What do you think about this news? Talk about it in the comments section below.

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By Monique Jones

Monique Jones blogs about race and culture in entertainment, particularly movies and television. You can read her articles at Racialicious, and her new site, COLOR . You can also listen to her new podcast, What would Monique Say.

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